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THE 



ENGLISH NOVEL 



AND THE 



PRINCIPLE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT 



SIDNEY LANIER 

LECTURER IN JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY; AUTHOR OR 
"the science of ENGLISH VERSE " 




NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1883 






Copyright by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1883 



GRANT, FAIRES & RODOKRS, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The following chapters were originally deliv- 
ered as public lectures at Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity, in the winter and spring of 1881. Had 
Mr. Lanier lived to prepare them for the press, 
he would probably have recast them to some ex- 
tent ; but the present editor has not felt free to 
make any changes from the original manuscript, 
beyond the omission of a few local and occasional 
allusions, and the curtailment of several long ex- 
tracts from well-known writers. 

Although each is complete in itself, this work 

and its foregoer. The Science of English Verse, 

were intended to be parts of a comprehensive 

philosophy of formal and substantial beauty in 

literature, which, unhappily, the author did not 

live to develop. 

W. H. B. 



THE ENGLISH NOVEL 



AND THE 



PRINCIPLE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT. 



I. 

The series of lectures which I last had the pleasure 
of delivering in this hall was devoted to the exposition 
of what is beyond doubt the most remarkable, the most 
persistent, the most wide-spread, and the most noble 
of all those methods of arranging words and ideas in 
definite relations, which have acquired currency among 
men — namely, the methods of verse, or Formal Poetry. 
That exposition began by reducing all possible phe- 
nomena of verse to terms of vibration ; and having thus 
secured at once a solid physical basis for this science, 
and a precise nomenclature in which we could talk 
intelligibly upon this century-befogged subject, we ad- 
vanced gradually from the most minute to the largest 
possible considerations upon the matter in hand. 

Now, wishing that such courses as I might give here 
should preserve a certain coherence with each other, I 
have hoped that I could secure that end by successively 
treating The Great Forms of Modern Literature ; and, 
wishing further to gain whatever advantage of entertain- 
ment for you may lie in contrast and variety, I have 

T 



TJie Enolish Novel 



"^ 



thought that inasmuch as we have already studied the 
Verse-Form in General, we might now profitably study 
some great Prose-Forms in Particular, and in still further 
contrast; that we might study that form not so much 
analytically — as when we developed the Scienie of 
Formal Poetry from a single physical principle — but 
this time synthetically, from the point of view of literary 
art rather than of literary science. 

I am further led to this general plan by the con- 
sideration that so far as I know — but my reading in this 
direction is not wide, and I may be in error — there is no 
book extant in any language which gives a conspectus 
,of all those well-marked and widely-varying literary 
forms which have differentiated themselves in the course 
of time, and of the curious and subtle needs of the 
modern civilized man which, under the stress of that 
imperious demand for expression which all men's emo- 
tions make, have respectively determined the modes 
of such expression to be in one case The Novel, in 
another The Sermon, in another The Nezvspaper 
Leader, in another Tlie Scientific Essay, in another The 
Popular Magazine Article/m another The Semi-Scientific 
Lecture, and so on : each of these prose-forms, you ob- 
serve, having its own limitations and fitnesses quite as 
well-defined as the Sonnet-Form, the Ballad-Form, the 
Drama-Form, and the like in verse. 

And, with this general plan, a great number of con- 
siderations which I hope will satisfactorily emerge as we 
go on, lead me irresistibly to select the Novel as the 
particular prose-form for our study. 

It happens, indeed, that over and above the purely 
literary interest which would easily give this form the 
first place in such a series as the present, the question of 
the Novel has just at this time become one of the most 



And the Principle of its Development. 3 

pressing and vital of all the practical problems which 
beset our moral and social economy. 

The novel, — what we call the novel — is a new inven- 
tion. It is customary to date the first English novel with 
Richardson in 1740; and just as it has been impossible 
to confine other great inventions to the service of virtue 
— for the thief can send a telegram to his pal as easily 
as the sick man to his doctor, and the locomotive spins 
along no less merrily because ten car-loads of rascals 
may be profiting by its speed— so vice as well as virtue 
has availed itself of the novel-form, and we have such 
spectacles as Scott, and Dickens, and Eliot, and Mac- 
donald, using this means to purify the air in one place, 
while Zola, in another, applies the very same means to 
defiling the whole earth and slandering all humanity 
under the sacred names of " naturalism," of " science," 
of " physiology." Now I need not waste time in de- 
scanting before this audience upon the spread of the novel 
among all classes of modern readers : while I have been 
writing this, a well-considered paper on " Fiction in our 
Public Libraries," has appeared in the current Interna- 
tional Revieiu, which, among many suggestive state- 
ments, declares that out of pretty nearly five millions 
(4,872,595) of volumes circulated in five years by the 
Boston Public Library, nearly four millions (3,824,938), 
that is about four-fifths, were classed as " Juveniles 
and Fiction ; " and merely mentioning the strength 
which these figures gain when considered along with the 
fact that they represent the reading of a people supposed 
to be more " solid " in literary matter than any other in 
the country — if we inquire into the proportion at Balti- 
more, I fancy I have only to hold up this copy of 
James's The American, which I borrowed the other day 
from the Mercantile Library, and which I think I may 



4 The English Novel 

say, after considerable rummaging about the books of 
that institution, certainly bears more marks of " circula- 
tion " than any solid book in it. In short, as a people, 
the novel is educating us. Thus we cannot take any 
final or secure solace in the discipline and system of our 
schools and universities until we have also learned to 
regulate this fascinating universal teacher which has 
taken such hold upon all minds, from the gravest scho- 
lar down to the boot-black shivering on the windy 
street corner over his dime-novel,^ — this educator whose 
principles are fastening themselves upon your boy's 
mind, so that long after he has forgotten his aino and his 
tupto, they will be controlling his relations to his fellow- 
man, and determining his happiness for life. 

But we can take no really effective action upon this 
matter until we understand precisely what the novel is 
and means ; and it is, therefore, with the additional plea- 
sure of stimulating you to systematize and extend your 
views upon a living issue which demands your opinion, 
that I now invite you to enter with me, without further 
preliminary, upon a series of studies in which it is pro- 
posed, first, to inquire what is that special relation of the 
novel to the modern man, by virtue of which it has become 
a paramount literary form ; and, secondly, to illustrate 
this abstract inquiry, when completed, by some concrete 
readings in the greatest of modern English novelists. 

In the course of this inquiry I shall be called on to 
bring before you some of the very largest conceptions of 
which the mind is capable ; and inasmuch as several of 
the minor demonstrations will begin somewhat remotely 
from the Novel, it will save me many details which 
would be otherwise necessary, if I indicate in a dozen 
words the four special lines of development along one or 
other of which I shall be always travelling. 



And the Principle of its Develop^nent. 5 

My first line will concern itself with the enormous 
growth in the personality of man which our time reveals 
when compared, for instance, with the time of /Eschylus. 

I shall insist with the utmost reverence that between 
every human being and every other human being exists 
a radical, unaccountable, inevitable difference from birth; 
this sacred Difference between man and man, by virtue 
of which I am I, and you are you ; this marvellous 
separation which we express by the terms " personal 
identity," " self-hood," " me," — it is the unfolding of 
this, I shall insist, which since the time of yEschylus 
(say) has w^rought all those stupendous changes in the 
relation of man to God, to physical nature, and to his 
fellow, which have culminated in the modern cultus. I 
can best bring upon you the length and breadth of this 
idea of modern personality as I conceive it, by stating it 
in terms which have recently been made prominent and 
familiar by the discussion as to the evolution of genius ; 
a phase of which appears in a very agreeable paper 
by Mr. John Fi^ke in a recent Atlantic Monthly on 
" Sociology and Hero Worship." Says Mr. Fiske, in a 
certain part of this article, " Every species of animals or 
plants consists of a great number of individuals which 
are nearly, but not exactly alike. Each individual varies 
slightly in one characteristic or another from a certain 
type which expresses the average among all the indi- 
viduals of the species. . . . Now the moth with his 
proboscis twice as long as the average ... is what we 
call a spontaneous variation ; and the Darwin or the 
Helmholtz is what we call a 'genius'; and the analogy 
between the two kinds of variation is obvious enough." 
He proceeds in another place : " We cannot tell why a 
given moth has a proboscis exactly an inch and a quarter 
in length, any more than we can tell why Shakspeare was 



The English Novel 



"s 



a great dramatist," there being absolutely no precedent 
conditions by which the most ardent evolutionist could 
evolve William Shakspeare, for example, from old John 
Shakspeare and his wife. " The social philosopher must 
simply accept geniuses as data, just as Darwin accepts 
his spontaneous variations." 

But now if we reflect upon this prodigious series of 
spontaneous variations which I have called the sacred 
difference between man and man, — this personality which 
every father and mother are astonished at anew every 
day, when out of six children they perceive that each 
one of the six, from the very earliest moment of activity, 
has shown his own distinct individuality, differing wholly 
from either parent; the child who most resembles the 
parent physically, often having a personality which 
crosses that of the parent at the sharpest angles ; this 
radical, indestructible, universal personality which entitles 
every " me " to its privacy, which has in course of time 
made the Englishman's house his castle, which has deve- 
loped the Rights of Man, the American Republic, the 
supreme prerogative of the woman to say whom she will 
love, what man she shall marry ; this personality, so pre- 
cious that not even the ' miserablest wretch with no other 
possession l>ut his personality has ever been brought to 
say he would be willing to exchange it entire for that of 
the happiest being ; this personality which has brought 
about that, whereas in the time of yEschylus the common 
man was simply a creation of the State, like a modern 
corporation with rights and powers strictly limited by the 
State's charter, now he is a genuine sovereign who makes 
the State, a king as to every minutest particle of his in- 
dividuality so long as that kinghood does not cross the 
kinghood of his fellow, — when we reflect upon //lis awful 
spontaneous variation of personality, this "mystery in us 



A}id the Principle of its Development. 7 

which calls itself/" (as Thomas Carlyle has somewhere 
called it), which makes every man scientifically a human 
atom, yet an atom endowed above all other atoms with 
the power to choose its own mode of motion, its own 
combining equivalent, — when farther we reflect upon the 
relation of each human atom to each other human atom, 
and to the great Giver of personalities to these atoms, — 
how each is indissolubly bound to each, and to Him, and 
yet how each is discretely parted and impassably separ 
ated from each and from Him by a gulf which is simply 
no less deep than the width between the finite and the 
infinite, — when we reflect, finally, that it is this simple, 
indivisible, radical, indestructible, new force which each 
child brings into the world under the name of its self ; 
which controls the whole life of that child, so that its 
path is always a resultant of its own individual force on 
the one hand, and of the force of its surrounding circum- 
stances on the other,— we are bound to confess, it seems 
to me, that such spontaneous variations carry us upon a 
plane of mystery very far above those merely unessential 
variations of the offspring from the parental type in 
physique, and even above those rare abnormal variations 
which we call genius. 

In meditating upon this matter, I found a short time 
ago a poem of Tennyson's floating about the newspapers, 
which so beautifully and reverently chants this very sense 
of personality, that I must read you a line or two from it. 
I have since observed that much fun has been made of 
this piece, and I have seen elaborate burlesques upon it. 
But I think such an attitude could be possible only to 
one who had not passed along this line of thought. At 
any rate the poem seemed to me a very noble and raptu- 
rous hymn to the great Personality above us, acknow- 
ledging the mystery of our own personalities as finitely 



8 The English Novel 



s ' 



dependent upon, and yet so infinitely divided from His 
Personality. 

This poem is called De Pro/Hindis — Tzvo Greetings, and 
is addressed to a new-born child. I have time to read 
only a line or two here and there ; you will find the 
whole poem much more satisfactory. Please observe, 
however, the ample, comforting phrases and summaries 
with which Tennyson expresses the poetic idea of that 
personality which I have just tried to express from the 
point of view of science, of the evolutionist : 

Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
When all that was to be in all that was 
Whirl'd for a million aeons thro' the vast 
Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light — 



Thro' all this chahging world of changeless law, 
And every phase of ever-heightening life, 
Thou comest. 



O, dear Spirit, half-lost 
In thine own shadows and this fleshly sign 
That thou art thou — who wailest, being born 
And banish'd into mystery and the pain 
Of this divisible — indivisible world. * * * 

^ ***** Our mortal veil 

And shatter'd phantom of that infinite One 

Who made thee inconceivably thyself 

Out of his whole world — self and all in all — 

Live thou, and of the grain and husk, the grape 

And ivy berry choose ; and still depart 

From death to death thro' life and life, and find — 

This main miracle, that thou art thou, 

With power on thy own act and on the world. 

********* 



And the Prhiciple of its Development. 9 

We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in Thee ; 
We feel we are something — that also has come from Thee ; 
We are nothing, O Thou — but Thou wilt help us to be ; 
Hallowed be Thy name — Hallelujah ! 

I find some expressions here which give me great 
satisfaction : The Infinite One who made thee inconceiv- 
ably thyself; this divisible, indivisible world, this main 
miracle that thou art thou, etc. 

Now it is with this " main miracle," that I am I, and 
you, you — with this personality, that my first train of 
thought will busy itself; and I shall try to show by seve- 
ral concrete illustrations from the lines and between the 
lines of vEschylus and Plato and the like writers, com- 
pared with several modern writers, how feeble the sense 
and influence of it is in their time as contrasted with ours. 

In my second line of development, I shall call your 
attention to what seems to me a very remarkable and 
suggestive fact : to-wit, that Physical Science, Music, and 
the Novel, all take their rise at the same time ; of course, 
I mean what we moderns call science, music, and the 
novel. For example, if we select, for the sake of well- 
known representative names, Sir Isaac Newton (1642), 
John Sebastian Bach (1685), and Samuel Richardson 
(1689), the first standing for the rise of modern science, 
the second for the rise of modern music, the third for the 
rise of the modern novel, and observe that these three men 
are born within fifty years of each other, we cannot fail 
to find ourselves in the midst of a thousand surprising 
suggestions and inferences. For in our sweeping arc 
from ^schylus to the present time, fifty years subtend 
scarcely any space; we may say then these men are born 
together. And here the word accident has no meaning. 
Time, progress, then, have no accident. 

Now in this second train of thought I shall endeavor 

I* 



lo The English Novel 

to connect these phenomena with the principle of per- 
sonahty developed in the first train, and shall try to show 
that this science, music, and the novel, are flowerings- 
out of that principle in various directions ; for instance, 
each man in this growth of personality feeling himself 
in direct and personal relations with physical nature (not 
in relations obscured by the vague intermediary, hama- 
dryads and forms of the Greek system), a general desire 
to know the exact truth about nature arises ; and this 
desire carried to a certain enthusiasm in the nature of 
given men — behold the man of science ; a similar feeling 
of direct personal relation to the Unknown, acting simi- 
larly upon particular men, — behold the musician, and the 
ever-increasing tendency of the modern to worship God 
in terms of music ; likewise, a similar feeling of direct 
personal relation to each individual member of humanity, 
high or low, rich or poor, acting similarly, gives us such 
a novel as the Mill on the Floss, for instance, when for a 
long time we find ourselves interested in two mere chil- 
dren — Tom and Maggie Tulliver — or such novels as 
those of Dickens and his fellow-host who have called 
upon our human relation to poor, unheroic people. 

In my third train of thought, I shall attempt to 
show that the increase of personalities thus going on has 
brought about such complexities of relation that the 
older forms of expression were inadequate to them ; and 
that the resulting necessity has developed the wonder- 
fully free and elastic form of the modern novel out of the 
more rigid Greek drama, through the transition form of 
the Elizabethan drama. 

And, fourthly, I shall offer copious readings from some 
of the most characteristic modern novels, in illustration 
of the general principles thus brought forward. 

Here, — as the old preacher Hugh Latimer grimly said 



And the Principle of its Develop77tent. 1 1 

in closing one of his powerful descriptions of future 
punishment, — you see your fare. 

Permit me, then, to begin the execution of this plan 
by bringing before you two matters which will be con- 
veniently disposed of in the outset, because they affect all 
these four lines of thought in general, and because 
I find the very vaguest ideas prevailing about them 
among those whose special attention happens not to have 
been called this way. 

As to the first point ; permit me to remind you how 
lately these prose forms have been developed in our liter- 
ature as compared with the forms of verse. Indeed, 
abandoning the thought of any particular forms of prose, 
consider for how long a time good English poetry was 
written before any good English prose appears. It is 
historical that as far back as the seventh century Caedmon 
is writing a strong English poem in an elaborate form of 
verse. Well-founded conjecture carries us back much 
farther than this ; but without relying upon that, we have 
clear knowledge that all along the time when Beowulf 
and TJie Wanderer — to me one of the most artistic and 
affecting of English poems — and The Battie of Maldon 
are being written, all along the time when Caedmon and 
Aldhelm and the somewhat mythical Cynewulf are sing- 
ing, formal poetry or verse has reached a high stage of 
artistic development. But not only so ; after the Nor- 
man change is consummated, and our language has fairly 
assimilated that tributary stock of words and ideas and 
influences ; \\\q poetic advance, the development of verse, 
goes steadily on. 

If you examine the remains of our lyric poetry 
written along in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — 
short and unstudied little songs as many of them are, 
songs which come upon us out of that obscure period 



I 2 The EnFlish Novel 



<b' 



like brief little bird-calls from a thick-leaved wood — if, I 
say, we examine these songs, written as many of them 
are by nobody in particular, it is impossible not to 
believe that a great mass of poetry, some of which must 
have been very beautiful, was written in the two hundred 
years just before Chaucer, and that an extremely small 
proportion of it can have come down to us. 

But, in all this period, where is the piece of English 
prose that corresponds with The Wanderer, or with the 
daintier Cuckoo-Song of the early twelfth century ? In 
point of fact, we cannot say that even the conception of an 
artistic prose has occurred to English literary endeavor 
until long after Chaucer. King Alfred's Translations, 
the English Chronicle, the Homilies of .^Ifric, afe 
simple and clear enough ; and, coming down later, the 
English Bible set forth by Wyclif and his contempo- 
raries. Wyclifs sermons and tracts, and Mandeville's 
account of his travels are effective enough, each to its 
own end. But in all these the form is so far overridden 
by the direct pressing purpose, either didactic or 
educational, that — with exceptions I cannot now specify 
in favor of the Wyclif Bible — I can find none of them in 
which the prose seems controlled by considerations of 
beauty. Perhaps the most curious and interestin-g proof 
I could adduce of the obliviousness of even the most 
artistic Englishman in this time to the possibility of 
a melodious and uncloying' English prose, is the prose 
work of Chaucer. While, so far as concerns the mere 
music of verse, I cannot call Chaucer a great artist, yet 
he was the greatest of his time ; from him, therefore, 
we have the right to expect the best craftsmanship in 
words ; for all fine prose depends as much upon its 
rhythms and correlated proportions as fine verse ; and, 
noiv, since we have an art of prose, it is a perfect test of 



A?td the Principle of its Development. 1 3 

the real excellence of a poet in verse to try his corre- 
sponding excellence in prose. But in Chaucer's time 
there is no art of English prose. Listen, for example, to 
the first lines of that one of Chaucer's Canterbury series 
which he calls The Parson s Tale, and which is in prose 
throughout. It happens very pertinently to my present 
discussion that in the prologue to this tale some con- 
versation occurs which reveals to us quite clearly a 
current idea of Chaucer's time as to the proper distinc- 
tion between prose and verse — or " rym" — and as to the 
functions and subject-matter peculiarly belonging to each 
of these forms ; and, for that reason, let me preface my 
quotation from the Parsois Tate with a bit of it. As 
the Canterbury Pilgrims are jogging merrily along, 
presently it appears that but one more tale is needed to 
carry out the original proposition, and so the ever- 
important Host calls on the Parson for it, as follows : 

As we were entryng at a thropes ende, 
For while our Hoost, as he was wont to gye. 
As in this caas, our joly compaignye, 
Seyde in this wise : " Lordyngs, everichoon, 
Now lakketh us no tales moo than oon," etc., 

and turning to the Parson, 

" Sir Prest," quod he, "artow a vicary? 
Or arte a persoun ? Say soth, by thy fey, 
Be what thou be, ne breke thou nat oure pley ; 
For every man, save thou, hath told his tale. 
Unbokele and schew us what is in thy male. 
Tel us a fable anoon, for cokkes boones ! " 

Whereupon the steadfast parson proceeds to assure the 
company that whatever he may have in his male [wallet] 
there is none of your light-minded and fictitious verse 
in it ; nothing but grave and reverend prose. 



14 The English Novel 

This Persoun him answerede al at oones : 
Thou getest fable noon i-told for me. 

(And you will presently observe that " fable " in the 
parson's mind means very much the same with verse or 
poetry, and that the whole business of fiction — that same 
fiction which has now come to occupy such a command- 
ing place with us moderns, and which we are to study 
with such reverence under its form of the novel — implies 
downright lying and wickedness.) 

Thou getist fable noon i-told for me ; 
For Paul, that writeth unto Timothe, 
Repreveth hem that weyveth soothfastnesse, 
And tellen fables and such wrecchednesse, etc, 

For which I say, if that yow list to heere 
Moralite and virtuous mateere, 

(That is — as we shall presently see — prose). 

And thanne that ye will geve me audience, 
I wol ful fayne at Cristes reverence. 
Do you pleasaunce leful, as I can; 
But trusteth wel, I am a Suthern man, 
I can nat geste, rum, ram, ruf, by letter, 
Ne, God wot, rym hold 1 but litel better ; 
And therfor, if yow list, I wol not glose, 
I wol yow telle a mery tale in prose. 

Here our honest parson, (and he was honest ; I am 
frightfully tempted to go clean away from my path and 
read that heart-filling description of him which Chaucer 
gives in the general Prologue to the Canterbury Tales\ 
sweeps away the whole literature of verse and of fiction 
with the one contemptuous word " glose " — by which he 
seems to mean a sort of shame-faced lying all the more 
pitiful because done in verse — and sets up prose as the 
proper vehicle for " moralite and virtuous mateere." 



And the Prhiciple of its Development. 1 5 

With this idea of the function of prose, you will not 
be surprised to find, as I read these opening sentences of 
the pastor's so-called tale, that the style is rigidly senten- 
tious, and that the movement of the whole is like that 
of a long string of proverbs, which, of course, presently 
becomes intolerably droning and wearisome. The par- 
son begins : 

" Many ben the weyes espirituels that leden folk to our 
Lord Ihesu Crist, and to the regne of glorie ; of whiche 
weyes ther is a ful noble wey, which may not faile to no 
man ne to womman, that thurgh synne hath mysgon fro 
the right wey of Jerusalem celestial ; and this wey is 
cleped penitence. Of which men schulden gladly herken 
and enquere with al here herte, to wyte, what is peni- 
tence, and whens is cleped penitence ? And in what 
maner and in how many maneres been the acciones or 
workynge of penitence, and how many speces ben of 
penitence, and which thinges apperteynen and byhoven 
to penitence and whiche thinges destourben penitence." 

In reading page after page of this bagpipe-bass, one 
has to remember strenuously all the moral beauty of the 
Parson's character in order to forgive the droning ugliness 
of his prose. Nothing could better realize the descrip- 
tion which Tennyson's Northern Fanner gives of his 
parson's manner of preaching and the effect thereof: 

An' I hallus corned to t' choorch afoor my Sally wur dead, 
An' 'eerd un a bummin' awaay loike a buzzard-clock ower 

my yead ; 
An' I ntver knaw'd what a meaned, but I thowt a 'ad 

summut to saay, 
An' I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said, an' I corned awaay. 

It must be said, however, in justice to Chaucer, that 
he writes better prose than this when he really sets about 



1 6 The Eiiplish Novel 



t>' 



telling a tale. What the Parson calls his " tale " turns 
out, to the huge disgust, I suspect, of several other pil- 
grims besides the host, to be nothing more than a homily 
or sermon, in which the propositions about penitence, 
with many minor heads and sub-divisions, are unspar- 
ingly developed to the bitter end. But in the Ta/e of 
Mclibceiis his inimitable faculty of story-telling comes to 
his aid, and determines his sentences to a little more 
variety and picturesqueness, though the sententious still 
predominates. Here, for example, is a bit of dialogue 
between Melibceus and his wife, which I selected be- 
cause, over and above its application here as early prose, 
we will lind it particularly suggestive presently when we 
come to compare it with some dialogue in George Eliot's 
Adam Bede, where the conversation is very much upon 
the same topic. 

It seems that Melibceus, being still a young man, goes 
away into the fields, leaving his wife Prudence and his 
daughter — whose name some of the texts give in its 
Greek form as Sophia, while others, quaintly enough, 
call her Sapience, translating the Greek into Latin — in 
the house. Thereupon " three of his olde foos " (says 
Chaucer) " have it espyed, and setten laddres to the 
walles of his hous, and by the wyndowes ben entred, and 
beetyn his wyf, and wounded his daughter with fyve 
mortal woundes, in fyve sondry places, that is to sayn, in 
here feet, in her handes, in here eres, in her nose, and in 
here mouth ; and lafte her for deed, and went away." 
Melibceus assembles a great counsel of his friends, and 
these advise him to make war, with an interminable dull 
succession of sententious maxims and quotations which 
would merely have maddened a modern person to such 
a degree that he would have incontinently levied war 
upon his friends as well as his enemies. But after awhile 



And the Principle of its Development. 17 

Dame Prudence modestly advises against the war. 
" This Meliboeus answerde unto his wyf Prudence : ' I 
purpose not,' quod he, ' to werke by this counseil, for 
many causes and resouns ; for certes every wight wolde 
holde me thanne a fool, this is to sayn, if I for thy coun- 
seil wolde chaunge things that affirmed ben by somany 
wise. 

Secondly, I say that alle wommen be wikked, and 
noon good of hem alle. For of a thousand men, saith 
Solomon, I find oon good man ; but certes of alle 
wommen good womman find I never noon. And also 
certes, if I governede am by thy counseil, it schulde seme 
that I hadde given to the over me the maistry ; and God 
forbid er it so were. For Ihesus Syrac saith,' " etc., etc. 
You observe here, although this is dialogue between man 
and wife, the prose nevertheless tends to the sententious, 
and every remark must be supported with some dry old 
maxim or epigrammatic saw. Observe too, by the way, 
— and we shall find this point most suggestive in study- 
ing the modern dialogue in George Eliot's novels, etc., — 
that there is absolutely no individuality or personality in 
the talk ; Meliboeus drones along exactly as his friends 
do, and his wife quotes old authoritative saws, just as he 
does. But Dame Prudence replies, — and all those who 
are acquainted with the pungent Mrs. Poyser in George 
Eliot's Adam Bcde will congratulate Meliboeus that his 
foregoing sentiments concerning woman were uttered 
five hundred years before that lady's tongue began to 
wag, — " When Dame Prudence, ful debonerly and with 
gret pacience, hadde herd al that her housbande liked for 
to saye, thanne axede sche of him license for to speke, 
and sayde in this wise : ' My Lord,' quod sche, ' as to 
your firste resoun, certes it may lightly be answered ; for 

I say it is no foly to chaunge counsel when the thing is 
2 



1 8 The En oils h Novel 



<:> ' 



chaungid, or elles when the thing semeth otherwise 
than it was bifoore.'" This very wise position she sup- 
ports with argument and authority, and then goes on 
boldly to attack not exactly Solomon's wisdom, but the 
number of data from which he drew it. "'And though 
that Solomon say he fond never good womman, it fol- 
with nought therfore that alle wommen ben wicked ; for 
though that he fonde noone goode wommen, certes many 
another man hath founden many a womman ful goode 
and trewe.'" (Insinuating, what is doubtless true, that 
the finding of a good woman depends largely on the kind 
of man who is looking for her.) 

After many other quite logical replies to all of Meli- 
boeus' positions, Dame Prudence, closes with the follow- 
ing argument : " And moreover, whan oure Lord hadde 
Great Adam oure forme fader, he sayde in this wise, Hit 
is not goode to be a man alone ; makes we to him an 
help semblable to himself Here may ye se that, if that 
a womman were not good, and hir counseil good and 
profytable, oure Lord God of heven would neither have 
wrought hem, ne called hem help of man, but rather con- 
fusion of man. And ther sayde oones a clerk in two 
versus, What is better than gold ? Jasper. And what is 
better than jasper? Wisdom. And what is better than 
wisdom ? Womman. And what is better than a good 
womman ? No thing." 

When we presently come to contrast this little scene 
between man and wife in what may fairly be called the 
nearest approach to the modern novel that can be found 
before the fifteenth century, we shall find a surprising 
number of particulars, besides the unmusical tendency to 
run into the sententious or proverbial form, in which 
the modern mode of thought differs from that of the old 
writers from whom Chaucer got his Meliboeus. 



A7td the Principle of its Development. 19 

This sententious monotune (if I may coin a word) of 
the prose, when faUing upon a modern ear, gives almost 
a comical tang, even to the gravest utterances of the 
period. For example, here are the opening lines of a 
fragment of prose from a MS. in the Cambridge 
University Library, reprinted by the early English Text 
Society in the issue for 1870. It is good, pithy reading, 
too. It is called "The Six Wise Masters' Speech of 
Tribulation." 

Observe that the first sentence, though purely in the 
way of narrative, is just as sententious in form as the 
graver proverbs of each master that follow. 

It begins : 

Here begynyth A shorte extracte, and tellyth how ]7ar ware sex 
masterys assemblede, ande eche one askede o]?er quhat thing j^ai 
sholde spek of gode, and all ]7ei war acordet to spek of tribula- 
coun. 

The fyrste master seyde, ]7at if ony thing hade bene mor better 
to ony man lewynge in this werlde J^an tribulacoun, god wald 
haue gewyne it to his sone. But he sey wyell that thar was no bet- 
ter, and tharfor be gawe it hum, and mayde home to soffer moste 
in this wrechede worlde than euer dyde ony man, or euermore 
shall. 

The secunde master seyde, |?at if |?ar wer ony man |7at mycht 
be wyth-out spote of sine, as god was, and mycht levyn bodely birty 
yheris wyth-out mete, ande also were dewote in preyinge J7at he 
mycht speke wyth angele in J^e erth, as dyde mary magdalene, yit 
mycht he not deserve in |?at lyffe so gret meyde as A man deservith 
in suffring of A lytyll tribulacoun. 

The threde master seyde, |7at if the moder of gode and all the 
halowys of hewyn preyd for a man, \€\ should not get so gret 
meyde as he should hymselfe be meknes and suffryng of tribula- 
coun. 

Now asking you, as I pass, to remember that I have 
selected this extract, like the others, with the further 
purpose of presently contrasting the substance of it with 



20 ' The English Novel 

modern utterances, as well as the forin which we are 
now mainly concerned — if we cut short this search after 
artistic prose in our earlier literature, and come down at 
once to the very earliest sign of a true feeling for the mu- 
sical movement of prose sentences, we are met by the fact, 
which I hope to show is full of fruitful suggestions upon 
our present studies, that the art of English prose is at 
least eight hundred years younger than the art of 
English verse. For, in coming down our literature 
from Csedmon — whom, in some conflict of dates, we can 
safely place at 670 — the very first writer I find who 
shows a sense of the rhythmical flow and gracious music 
of which our prose is so richly capable, is Sir Thomas 
Malory; and his one work. The History of King 
Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, dates 
1469-70, exactly eight hundred years after Csedmon's 
poetic outburst. 

Recalling our extracts just read, and remembering 
how ungainly and awkward was the sport of their 
sentences, listen for a moment to a few lines from Sir 
Thomas Malory. I think the most unmusical ear, the 
most cursory attention, cannot fail to discern immediately 
how much more flowing and smooth is the movement 
of this. I read from the fifth chapter of King Arthur. 

"And King Arthur was passing wrath for the hurt of Sir Griflet. 
And by and by he commanded a man of his chamber that his best 
horse and armor be without the city on to-morrow-day. Right so 
in the morning he met with his man and his horse, and so mounted 
up and dressed his shield, and took his spear, and bade his cham- 
berlain tarry there till he came again." Presently he meets Merlin 
and they go on together. 

" So as they went thus talking, they came to the fountain and 
the rich pavilion by it. Then King Arthur was ware where a 
knight sat all armed in a chair. 'Sir Knight,' said King Arthur, 
' for what cause abidest thou here ? that there may no knight 



Afid the Principle of its Development. 2 1 

ride this way but if he do joust with thee?' said the King. 'I 
rede thee leave that custom,' said King Arthur. 

' This custom,' said the knight, ' have I used and will use, maugre 
who saith nay ; and who is grieved with my custom, let him amend 
it that will.' 

' I will amend it," said King Arthur, 'And I shall defend it,' said 
the knight." (Observe w/Z/and shall\i&x€). 

Here, you observe not only is there musical flow of 
single sentences, but one sentence remembers another 
and proportions itself thereto — if the last was long, this, 
is shorter or longer, and if one calls for a certain tune, 
the most calls for a different tune — and we have not only 
grace but variety. In this variety may be found an easy 
test of artistic prose. If you try to read two hundred 
lines of Chaucer's Mclibcciis or his Parson's Tale aloud, 
you are presently oppressed with a sense of bagpipish- 
ness in your own voice which becomes intolerable ; but 
you can read Malory's King Arthur aloud from begin- 
ning to end with a never-cloying sense of proportion 
and rhythmic flow. 

I wish I had time to demonstrate minutely how much 
of the relish of all fine prose is due to the arrangement 
of the sentences in such a way that consecutive sentences 
do not call for the same tune ; for example, if one sen- 
tence is sharp antithesis — you know the well-marked 
speech tune of an antithesis, " do you mean tliis book, 
or do you mean that hooVT' you must be careful in the 
next sentence to vary the tune from that of the antithesis. 

In the prose I read you from Chaucer and from the 
old manuscript, a large part of the intolerableness is due 
to the fact that nearly every sentence involves the tune 
of an aphorism or proverb, and the iteration of the same 
pitch-successions in the voice presently becomes weari- 
some. This fault — of the succession of antithetic ideas so 



22 The English Novel 



^>' 



that the voice becomes weary of repeating the same con- 
trariety of accents — I can illustrate very strikingly in a 
letter which I happen to remember of Queen Elizabeth, 
whom I have found to be a great sinner against good 
prose in this particular. 

Here is part of a letter from her to King Edward VI. 
concerning a portrait of herself which it seems the king 
had desired. (Italicised words represent antithetic accents.) 

" Like as the rich man that daily gathereth riches to riches, and 
to one bag of money layeth a great sort till it come to infiitite ; 
so methinks your majesty, not being sufficed with so many benefits 
and gentleness shewed to me afore this time, doth now increase 
them in asking and desiring where you may bid and command, re- 
quiring a thing not worthy the desiring for itself, but made worthy 
for your highness' request. My picture I mean; in which, if the z«- 
w ard goodi mind toward your grace might as well be declared, as 
the oiitivard face and countenance shall be seen, I would not have 
tarried the commandment but prevented it, nor have been the last 
to grant, but the Jirst to offer it." 

And so on. You observe here into what a sing-song 
the voice must fall ; if you abstract the words, and say 
over the tune, it is continually ; tum-ty-ty tum-ty-ty, 
tum-ty-ty tum-ty-ty. >.^^- 

I wish also that it lay within my province to pass on 
and show the gradual development of English prose, 
through Sir Thomas More, Lord Berners, and Roger 
Ascham, whom we may assign to the earlier half of the 
1 6th Century, until it reaches a great and beautiful ar- 
tistic stage in the prose of Fuller, of Hooker, and of 
Jeremy Taylor. 

But the fact which I propose to use as throwing light 
on the novel, is simply the lateness of English prose as 
compared with English verse; and we have already. suffi- 
ciently seen that the rise of our prose must be dated at 
least eight centuries after that of our formal poetry. 



And the Principle of its Development. 23 

But having established the fact that EngHsh prose is 
so much later in development than English verse, the 
point that I wish to make in this connection now requires 
me to go and ask the question why is this so. 

Without the time to adduce-supporting tacts from other 
literature, and indeed wholly unable to go into elaborate 
proof, let me say at once that upon examining the mat- 
ter it seems probable that the whole earlier speech of 
man must have been rhythmical, and that in point of fact 
we began with verse which is much simpler in rhythm 
than any prose ; and that we departed from this regular 
rhythmic utterance into more and more complex utter- 
ance just according as the advance of complexity in 
language and feeling required the freer forms of 
prose. 

To adduce a single consideration leading toward this 
view : reflect for a moment that the very breath of every 
man necessarily divides off his words into rhythmic 
periods ; the average rate of a man's breath being 17 to 
20 respirations in a minute. Taking the faster rate as the 
more probable one in speaking, the man would, from the 
periodic necessity of refilling the lungs, divide his words 
into twenty groups, equal in time, every minute, and if 
these syllables were equally pronounced at, say, about 
the rate of 200 a minute, we should have ten syllables 
in each group, each ten syllables occupying (in the ag- 
gregate at least) the same time with any other ten syllables, 
that is, the time of our breath. 

But this is just the rhythm of our English blank verse, 
in essential type ; ten syllables to the line or group ; and 
our primitive talker is speaking in the true English heroic 
rhythm. Thus it may be that our dear friend M. Jour- 
dain was not so far wrong after all in his astonishment 
at finding that he had been speaking prose all his life. 



24 The English Novel 



II. 



Perhaps I ought here carefully to state that in pro- 
pounding the idea that the whole common speech of 
early man may have been rhythmical through the 
operation of uniformity of syllables and periodicity of 
breath, and that for this reason prose, which is practi- 
cally verse of a very complex rhythm, was naturally 
a later development; in propounding this idea, I say, 
I do not mean to declare that the prehistoric man, 
after a hard day's work on a flint arrow-head at his 
stone-quarry would dance back to his dwelling in the 
most beautiful rhythmic figures, would lay down his 
palaeolithic axe to a slow song, and, striking an operatic 
attitude, would call out to his wife to leave off fishing in 
the stream and bring him a stone mug of water, all in a 
most sublime and impassioned flight of poetry. What I 
do mean to say is that if the prehistoric man's syllables 
were uniform, and his breath periodic, then the rhythmi- 
cal results described would follow. Here let me at once 
illustrate this, and advance a step towards my final point 
in this connection, by reminding you how easily the most 
commonplace utterances in modern English, particularly 
when couched mainly in words of! one syllable, fall into 
quite respectable verse rhythms. I might illustrate this, 
but Dr. Samuel Johnson has already done it for me : — 
" I put my hat upon my head and walked into the Strand, 
and there I met another man whose hat was in his hand." 
We have only to arrange this in proper form in order to 



Ajtd the Principle of its Development. 25 

see that it is a stanza of verse quite perfect as to all 
technical requirement: — 

" I put my hat upon my head, 

And walked into the Strand, 
And there I met another man, 

Whose hat was in his hand." 

Now let me ask you to observe precisely what 
happens, when by adding words here and there in tliis 
verse we more and more obscure its verse form and 
bring out its prose form. Suppose, for example, we 
here write " hastily/' and here " rushed forth," and here 
" encountered," and here " hanging," so as to make it read : 

" I hastily put my hat upon my head. 

And rushed forth into the Strand, 
And there I encountered another man, 

Whose hat was hanging in his hand." 

Here we have made unmitigated prose, but how ? 
Remembering that original verse was in iambic 4's and 3's, 



I put I my hat | up-on | my head | 

— by putting in the word '' hastily" in the first line, we 
have not destroyed the rhythm ; we still have the 
rhythmic sequence, " my hat upon my head," un- 
changed ; but we have merely added brief rhythms, 
namely that of the word " hastily," which we may call a 

modern or logacedic dactyl (hastily) ; that is to say, instead 
now of leaving our first line all iambic, we have varied 
that rhythmus with another; and in so doing have 
converted our verse into prose. Similarly, in the second 
line," rushed forth," which an English tongue would here 
deliver as a spondee — rushed forth — varies the rhythm by 
this .«;pondaic intervention, but still leaves us the original 
rhythmic cluster, " into the Strand." So, of the other 

2 



26 The English Novel 



i> 



introduced words, " encountered" and " hanging," each 
has its own rhythm — for an EngHsh tongue always 
gives these words with definite time-relations between 
the syllables, that is, in rhythm. Therefore, in order to 
make prose out of this verse, we have not destroyed the 
rhythms, we have added to them. We have not made 
\X. formless, we have made it contain more for ins. 

Now, in this analysis, which I have tried to bring to 
its very simplest terms, I have presented what seems to 
me the true genesis of prose ; and have set up a distinc- 
tion, which, though it may appear abstract and insignifi- 
cant at present, we shall presently see lies at the bottom 
of some most remarkable and pernicious fallacies concern- 
ing literature. That distinction is, that the relation of 
prose to verse is not the relation of \hQ formless \.o\\iQ^ 
formal; it is the relation of more forms to feivcr forms. It 
is this relation which makes prose a freer form than verse. 
When we are writing in verse, if we have the line with 
an iambus (say) then our next words or syllables must 
make an iambus, and we are confined to that form ; but 
if in prose, our next word need not be an iambus 
because the first was, but may be any one of several 
possible rhythmic forms ; thus, while in verse we must 
use one form, in prose we may use many forms ; and just 
to the extent of these possible forms is prose freer than 
verse. We shall find occasion presently to remember 
that prose is freer than verse, not because prose is form- 
less while verse is formal, but because any given 
sequence of prose has more forms in it than a sequence 
of verse. 

Here, reserving to a later place the special application 
of all this to the novel, I have brought my first general 
point to a stage where it constitutes the basis of 
the second one. You have already heard much of 



And the Principle of its Development. 27 

" forms" — of the verse-form, the prose-form, of form in 
art, and the like. Now, in the course of a considerable 
experience in what Shakspeare sadly calls " public 
means," I have found no matter upon which wider or 
more harmful misconceptions exist among people of 
culture, and particularly among us Americans, than 
this matter of the true functions of forms in art, of the 
true relation of science — which we may call the know- 
ledge of forms — to art, and most especially of these 
functions and relations in literary art. These miscon- 
ceptions have flowered out into widely different shapes. 

In one direction, for example, we find a large number 
of timorous souls, who believe that science, in explaining 
everything as they singularly fancy, will destroy the 
possibility of poetry, of the novel, in short of all works 
of the imagination ; the idea seeming to be that the 
imagination always requires the hall of life to be 
darkened before it displays its magic, like the modern 
spiritualistic seance-givers who can do nothing with the 
rope-tying and the guitars unless the lights are put out. 

Another form of the same misconception goes pre- 
cisely to the opposite extreme, and declares that the 
advance of science with its incidents is going to give a 
great new revolutionized democratic literature, which will 
wear a slouch hat and have its shirt open at the bosom, 
and generally riot in a complete independence of form. 

And finally — to mention no more than a third phase — 
we may consider the original misconception to have 
reached a climax which is at once absurd and infernal, 
in a professedly philosophical work called Le Roman 
Experimentale, recently published by M. Emile Zola, 
gravely defending his peculiar novels as the records of 
scientific experiments, and declaring that the whole field 
of imacfinative effort must follow his lead. 



28 The English Novel 

Now, if any of these beliefs are true, we are wickedly 
wasting our time here in studying the novel — at least any 
other novels except M. Zola's, and we ought to look to 
ourselves. Seriously, I do not believe I could render 
you a greater service than by here arraying such contri- 
bution as I can make towards some firm, clear and pious 
conceptions as to this matter of form, of science, in art, 
before briefly considering these three concrete errors I 
have enumerated — to wit, the belief (i) that science will 
destroy all poetry, all novel-writing and all imaginative 
work generally ; (2) that science will simply destroy the 
old imaginative products and build up a new formless 
sort of imaginative product in its stead ; and (3) that 
science will absorb into itself all imaginative effort, so 
that every novel will be merely the plain, unvarnished 
record of a scientific experiment in passion. Let me 
submit two or three principles whose steady light will 
leave, it seems to me, but little space for perplexity as 
to these diverse claims. 

Start, then, in the first place, with a definite recalling 
to yourself of the province of form throughout our whole 
daily life. Here we find a striking consensus, at least in 
spirit, between the deliverances of the sternest science 
and of the straitest orthodoxy. The latter, on the one 
hand, tells us that in the beginning the earth was without 
fo/m and void ; and it is only after the earth is formulated 
— after the various forms of the lights, of land and wa- 
ter, bird, fish and man appear — it is only then that life 
and use and art and relation and religion become possi- 
ble. What we call the creation, therefore, is not the 
making something out of nothing, but it is the giving of 
form to a something which, though existing, existed to 
no purpose because it had no form. 

On the other hand, the widest generalizations of science 



And the Principle of its Developme7it. 29 

bring us practically to the same view. Science would 
seem fairly to have reduced all this host of phenomena 
which we call the world into a congeries of motions in 
many forms. What we know by our senses is simply 
such forms of these motions as our senses have a corre- 
lated capacity for. The atoms of this substance, moving 
in orbits too narrow for human vision, impress my sense 
with a certain property which I call hardness or resist- 
ance, this "hardness" being simply our name for one 
form of atom-motion when impressing itself on the hu- 
man sense. So color, shape, &c. ; these are our names 
representing a correlation between certain other forms of 
motion and our senses. Regarding the whole universe 
thus as a great congeries of forms of motion, we may 
now go farther and make for ourselves a scientific and 
useful generalization, reducing a great number of facts to 
a convenient common denominator, by considering that 
Science is the knowledge of these forms ; that Art is the 
creation of beautiful forms ; that Religion is the faith in 
the infinite Form-giver and in that infinity of forms which 
many things lead us to believe as existing, but existing 
beyond any present correlative capacities of our senses ; 
and finally that Life is the control of all these forms to 
the satisfaction of our human needs. 

And now advancing a step : when we remember how 
all accounts, the scientific, the religious, the historical, 
agree that the progress of things is from chaos or form- 
lessness to form, and, as we saw in the case of verse and 
prose, afterwards from the one-formed to the many- 
formed, we are not disturbed by any shouts, however 
stentorian, of a progress that professes to be winning free- 
dom by substituting formlessness for form ; we know that 
the ages are rolling the other way, — who shall stop those 
wheels ? We know that what they really do who profess 



2,0 The English Novel 

to substitute formlessness for form is to substitute a bad 
form for a good one, or an ugly form for a beautiful one. 
Do not dream of getting rid of form ; your most cutting 
stroke at it but gives us two forms for one. For, in a 
sense which adds additional reverence to the original 
meaning of those words, we may devoutly say that in 
form we live and move and have our being. How strange, 
then, the furtive apprehension of danger lying behind too 
much knowledge of form, too much technic, which one 
is amazed to find prevailing so greatly in our own 
country. 

But, advancing a further step from the particular con- 
sideration of science as the knowledge of forms, let us 
come to the fact that as all art is a congeries of forms, 
each art must have its own peculiar science ; and always 
we have, in a true sense, the art of an art and the science 
of that art. For example, correlative to the art of music, 
we have the general science of music, which indeed con- 
sists of several quite separate sciences. If a man desire 
to become a musical composer, he is absolutely obliged 
to learn (i) the science of Musical Form, (2) the science 
of Harmony, and (3) the science of Orchestration or 
Instrumentation. 

The science of musical form, concerns this sort of 
matter, for instance. A symphony has generally four 
great divisions, called movements, separated usually from 
each other by a considerable pause. Each of these 
movements has a law of formation : it consists of two 
main subjects, or melodies, and a modulation-part. The 
sequence of these subjects, the method of varying them 
by causing now one and now another of the instru- 
ments to come forward and play the subject in hand 
while subordinate parts are assigned to the others, the 
interplay of the two subjects in the modulation-part, 



And the Principle of its Development. 31 

— all this is the subject-matter of a science which every 
composer must laboriously learn. 

But again : he must learn the great science of har- 
mony, and of that wonderful tonality which has caused 
our music to be practically a different art from what pre- 
ceding ages called music; this science of harmony hav- 
ing its own body of classifications and formulated laws 
just as the science of Geology has, and a voluminous 
literature of its own. Again, he must painfully learn the 
range and capacities of each orchestral instrument, lest 
he write passages for the violin which no violin can play, 
See, and further, the particular ideas which seem to as- 
sociate themselves with the tone-color of each instru- 
ment, as the idea of women's voices with the clarionet, 
the idea of tenderness and childlikeness with the oboe, 
&c. This is not all ; the musical composer may indeed 
write a symphony if he has these three sciences of music 
well in hand ; but a fourth science of music, namely, the 
physics of music, or musical acoustics, has now grown to 
such an extent that every composer will find himself 
lame without a knowledge of it. 

And so the art of painting has its correlative science 
of painting, involving laws of optics, and of form ; the art 
of sculpture, its correlative science of sculpture, involving 
the science of human anatomy, &c. ; and each one of the 
literary arts has its correlative science — the art of verse 
its science of verse, the art of prose its science of prose. 
Lastly, we all know that no amount of genius will supply 
the lack of science in art. Phidias may be all afire with 
the conception of Jove, but unless he is a scientific man 
to the extent of a knowledge of anatomy, he is no better 
artist than Strephon who cannot mould the handle of a 
goblet. What is Beethoven's genius until Beethoven has 
become a scientific man to the extent of knowinsf the 



32 The English Novel 

sciences of Musical Form, of Orchestration, and of 
Harmony ? 

But now if I go on and ask what would be the worth 
of Shakspeare's genius unless he were a scientific man to 
the extent of knowing the science of English verse, or 
what would be George Eliot's genius unless she knew 
the science of English prose or the science of novel- 
writing, a sort of doubtful stir arises, and it would seem 
as if a suspicion of some vague esoteric difference be- 
tween the relation of the literary arts to their correlative 
sciences and the relation of other arts to tJicir correlative 
sciences influenced the general mind. 

I am so unwilling you should think me here fighting 
a mere man of straw who has been arranged with a view 
to the convenience of knocking him down, and I find 
such mournful evidences of the complete misconception 
of form, of literary science in our literature, that, Avith a 
reluctance which every one will understand, I am going 
to draw upon a personal experience, to show the extent 
of that misconception. 

Some of you may remember that a part of the course 
of lectures which your present lecturer delivered here 
last year were afterwards published in book-form, under 
the title of TJie Science of English Verse. Happening 
in the publisher's office some time afterwards, I was 
asked if I would care to see the newspaper notices and 
criticisms of the book, whereof the publishers had col- 
lected a great bundle. Most curious to see if some 
previous ideas I had formed as to the general relation 
between literary art and science would be confirmed, I 
read these notices with great interest. Not only were 
my suspicions confirmed : but it is perfectly fair to say 
that nine out often, even of those which most generously 
treated the book in hand, treated it upon the general 



And the Principle of its Development, 2i7) 

theory that a work on the science of verse must neces- 
sarily be a collection of rules for making verses. Now, 
not one of these writers would have treated a work on 
the science of geology as a collection of rules for making 
rocks ; or a work on the science of anatomy as a collec- 
tion of rules for making bones or for procuring cadavers. 
In point of fact, a book of rules for making verses might 
very well be written; but then it would be a hand-book 
of the art of verse, and would take the whole science of 
verse for granted, — like an instruction-book for the 
piano, or the like. 

If we should find the whole critical body of a continent 
treating (say) Prof. Huxley's late work on the crayfish as 
really a cookery-book, intended to spread intelligent ideas 
upon the best methods of preparing shell-fish for the table, 
we should certainly suspect something wrong ; but this 
is precisely parallel with the mistake already mentioned. 

But even when the functions of form, of science, in 
literary art have been comprehended, one is amazed to 
find among literary artists themselves a certain apprehen- 
sion of danger in knowing too much of the forms of art. 
A valued friend who has won a considerable place in 
contemporary authorship in writing me not long ago. 
said, after much abstract and impersonal admission of a 
possible science of verse — in the way that one admits 
there may be griffins, but feels no great concern about 
it — ^^ as for me I would rather continue to write verse from 
pure instinct" 

This fallacy — of supposing that we do a thing by 
instinct simply because we learned to do it unsystematic- 
ally and \^ithout formal teaching — seems a curious 
enough climax to the misconceptions of literary science. 
You have only to reflect a moment in order to see that 
not a single line of verse was ever written by instinct 

2* 



34 The English Novel 

alone since the world began. For — to go no farther — 
the most poetically instinctive child is obliged at least to 
learn the science of language — the practical relation of 
noun and verb and connective — before the crudest line of 
verse can be written ; and since no child talks by instinct, 
since every child has to learn from others every word it 
uses, — with an amount of diligence and of study which 
is really stupendous when we think of it — what wild ab- 
surdity to forget these years passed by the child in learn- 
ing even the rudiments of the science of language which 
must be well in hand, mind you, before even the rudi- 
ments of the science of verse can be learned — what wild 
absurdity to fancy that one is writing verse by instinct 
when even the language of verse, far from being instinc- 
tive, had to be painfully, if unsystematically, learned as 
a science. 

Once, for all, remembering the dignity of form as we 
have traced it, remembering the relations of Science as 
the knowledge of forms, of Art as the creator of beautiful 
forms, of Religion as the aspiration towards unknown 
forms and the unknown Form-giver, let us abandon this 
unworthy attitude towards form, towards science, towards 
technic, in literary art, which has so long sapped our 
literary endeavor. 

The writer of verse is afraid of having too much form, 
of having too much technic ; he dreads it will interfere 
with his spontaneity. 

No more decisive confession of weakness can be made. 
It is only cleverness and small talent which is afraid of 
its spontaneity ; the genius, the great artist, is forever 
ravenous after new forms, after technic ; he will follow 
you to the ends of the earth if you will enlarge his 
artistic science, if you will give him a fresh form. For 
indeed genius, the great artist, never works in the 



A7id the Principle of its Development. 35 

frantic vein vulgarly supposed ; a large part of the work 
of the poet, for example, is reflective ; a dozen ideas in a 
dozen forms throng to his brain at once ; he must choose 
the best ; even in the extremest heat and sublimity of 
his raptus, he must preserve a god-like calm, and order 
thus and so, and keep the rule so that he shall to the 
end be master of his art and not be mastered by his art. 

Charlotte Cushman used often to tell me that when 
she was, as the phrase is, carried out of herself, she 
never acted well : she must have her inspiration, she 
must be in a true raptus, but the raptus must be well 
in hand, and she must retain the consciousness, at 
once sublime and practical, of every act. 

There is an old aphorism — it is twelve hundred years 
old — which covers all this ground of the importance of 
technic, of science, in the literary art, with such complete- 
ness and compactness that it always affects one like a 
poem. It was uttered, indeed, by a poet — and a rare 
one he must have been — an old Armorican named Herve, 
of whom all manner of beautiful stories have survived. 
This aphorism is, " He who will not answer to the 
rudder, must answer to the rocks." If any of you have 
read that wonderful description of shipwreck on these 
same Armorican rocks which occurs in the autobiography 
of Millet, the painter, and which was recently quoted in 
a number of Scribncrs Magazine, you can realize that 
one who lived in that old Armorica — the modern Brit- 
tany from which Millet comes — knew full well what it 
meant to answer to the rocks. 

Now, it is precisely this form, this science, this technic, 
which is the rudder of the literary artist, whether he 
work at verse or novels. I wish it were everywhere 
written, even in the souls of all our young American 
writers, that he who will not answer to the rudder shall 



36 The English Novel 

answer to the rocks. This was the belief of the gieatest 
literary artist our language has ever produced. 

We have direct contemporary testimony that Shaks- 
peare was supremely solicitous in this matter of form. 
Ben Jonson, in that hearty testimonial, " To the Mem- 
ory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shaks- 
peare, and What He Hath Left Us," which was prefixed 
to the edition of 1623, says, after praises which are lavish 
even for an Elizabethan eulogy : 

Yet must I not give Nature all : thy art, 

(Meaning here thy technic, thy care of form, thy science), 

My gentle Shakspeare, must enjoy a part ; 

For though the poet's matter Nature be. 
His art doth give the fashion ; and that he 

Who casts to write a living line must sweat, 
(Such as thine are) and strike the second heat 

Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same 
(And himself with it) that he thinks to frame; 

Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn, 
For a good poet's made as well as born. 

And such wert thou. Look how the father's face 
Lives in his issue, even so the race. 

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines 
In his well-turned and trite-filed lines, 

In each of which he seems to shake a lance. 
As brandished at the eyes of Ignorance." 

No fear with Shakspeare of damaging his spontaneity ; 
he shakes a lance at the eyes of Ignorance in every line. 

With these views of the progress of forms in general, 
of the relations of Science — or the knowledge of all forms 
— to Art, or the creation of beautiful forms, we are pre- 
pared, I think, to maintain much equilibrium in the 
midst of the discordant cries, already mentioned, (i) of 
those who beheve that Science will destroy all literary 



A?id the Prhiciple of its Development. 37 

art ; (2) of those who beheve that art is to advance by 
becomii.j democratic and formless ; (3) and lastly, of 
those who think that the future novelist is to enter the 
service of science as a police-reporter in ordinary for the 
information of current sociology. 

Let us, therefore, inquire if it is really true — as I am 
told is much believed in Germany, and as I have seen not 
infrequently hinted in the way of timorous apprehension 
in our own country — that science is to abolish the poet 
and the novel-writer and all imaginative literature. It is 
surprising that in all the discussions upon this subject the 
matter has been treated as belonging solely to the future. 
But surely life is too short for the folly of arguing from 
prophecy when we can argue from history ; and it seems 
to me this question is determined. As matter of fact, 
science (to confine our view to English science) has been 
already advancing with prodigious strides for two hun- 
dred and fifty years, and side by side with it English 
poetry has been advancing for the same period. Surely, 
whatever effect science has upon poetry can be traced 
during this long companionship. While Hooke and 
Wilkins and Newton and Horrox and the Herschels and 
Franklin and Davy and Faraday and the Darwins and 
Dalton and Huxley and many more have been penetrat- 
ing into physical nature, Dryden, Pope, Byron, Burns, 
Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, Longfellow, have been 
singing; while gravitation, oxygen, electro-magnetism, 
the atomic theory, the spectroscope, the siren, are being 
evolved, the Ode to St. Cecilia^ the Essay on Man, Man- 
fred, A man's a man for a' that, the Ode on Immortality , 
In Memoriam, the Ode to a Nightingale, The Psalm of 
Life, are being written. If indeed we go over into Ger- 
many, there is Goethe, at once pursuing science and 
poetry. 



38 The English Novel 

Now, if we examine the course and progress of this 
poetry, born thus within the very grasp and maw of this 
terrible science, it seems to me that we find — as to the 
substance of poetry — a steadily increasing confidence and 
joy in the mission of the poet, in the sacredness of faith 
and love and duty and friendship and marriage, and in 
the sovereign fact of man's personality ; while as to the 
form of the poetry, we find that just as science has pruned' 
our faith (to make it more faithful), so it has pruned our 
poetic form and technic, cutting away much unproductive 
wood and efflorescence and creating finer reserves and 
richer yields. Since it would be simply impossible, in 
the space of these lectures, to illustrate this by any de- 
tailed view of all the poets mentioned, let us confine our- 
selves to one, Alfred Tennyson, and let us inquire how it 
fares with him. Certainly no more favorable selection 
could be made for those who believe in the destructive- 
ness of science. Here is a man born in the midst of sci- 
entific activity, brought up and intimate with the freest 
thinkers of his time, himself a notable scientific pursuer 
of botany, and saturated by his reading with all the sci- 
entific conceptions of his age. If science is to sweep 
away the silliness of faith and love, to destroy the whole 
field of the imagination and make poetry folly, it is a 
miracle if Tennyson escape. But if we look into his own 
words, this miracle beautifully transacts itself before 
our eyes. Suppose we inquire, Has science cooled 
this poet's love ? We are answered in No. 60 of 
hi Memonam : 



If in thy second state sublime, 

Thy ransomed reason change replies 
With all the circle of the wise, 

The perfect flower of human time ; 



And the Principle of its Development. 39 

And if thou cast thine eyes below, 

How dimly character'd and slight, 
How dwarf d a growth of cold and night. 

How blanch'd with darkness must I grow ! 

Yet turn theci to the doubtful shore, 

Where thy first form was made a man, 
I loved thee, Spirit, and love, nor can 

The soul of Shakspeare love thee more. 

Here is precisely the same loving gospel that Shakspeare 
himself used to preach, in that series of Sonnets which 
we may call Jiis In Memoriam to his friend ; the same 
loving tenacity, unchanged by three hundred years of 
science. It is interesting to compare this No. 60 of 
Tennyson's poem with Sonnet 32 of Shakspeare's series, 
and note how both preach the supremacy of love over 
style or fashion. 

If thou survive my well-contented day. 

When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover. 

And shalt by fortune once more re-survey 

These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, 

Compare them with the bettering of the time ; 

And though they be outstripped by every pen, 

Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, 

Exceeded by the height of happier men. 

O then vouchsafe me but this loving thought : 

" Had my friend's muse grown with this growing age, 
A dearer birth than this his love had bought, 
To march in ranks of better equipage ; 
But since he died, and poets better prove. 
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love." 

Returning to Tennyson: has science cooled his yearn- 
ing for human friendship ? We are answered in No. 90 
of In Memoriam. Where was ever such an invocation to 
a dead friend to return ! 



40 The English Novel 

When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, 

And rarely pipes the mounted thrush ; 
Or underneath the barren bush 

Flits by the sea-blue bird of March ; 

Come, wear the form by which I know 
Thy spirit in time among thy peers ; 
The hope of unaccomplish'd years 

Be large and lucid round thy brow. 

When summer's hourly mellowing change 
May breathe, with many roses sweet, 
Upon the thousand waves of wheat, 

That ripple round the lonely grange ; 

Come ; not in watches of the night, 

But where the sunbeam broodeth warm. 
Come, beauteous in thine after-form, 

And like a finer light in light. 

Or still more touchingly, in No. 49, for here he writes 
from the depths of a sick despondency, from all the dark- 
ness of a bad quarter of an hour. 

Be near me when my light is low. 

When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick 
And tingle ; and the heart is sick. 

And all the wheels of being slow. 

Be near me when the sensuous frame 

Is racked with pains that conquer trust; 
And Time, a maniac scattering dust. 

And Life, a fury, slinging flame. 

Be near me when my faith is dry, 

And men the flies of latter spring, 
That lay their eggs, and sting and sing, 

And weave their petty cells and die. 

Be near me when I fade away. 

To point the term of human strife, 

And on the low dark verge of life 
The twilight of eternal day. 



And the Priiiciple of its Development. 41 

Has it diminished his tender care for the weakness of 
others? Vv'e are wonderfully answered in No. 33. 

O thou that after toil and storm 

Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air, 
Whose faith has centre everywhere, 

Nor cares to fix itself to form, 

Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 

Her early Heaven, her happy views; 
Nor then with shadow' d hint confuse 

A life that leads melodious days. 

Her faith thro' form is pure as thine. 

Her hands are quicker unto good. 

Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 
To which she links a truth divine ! 

See thou, that countest reason ripe 

In holding by the law within. 

Thou fail not in a world of sin, 
And ev'n for want of such a type. 

Has it crushed out his pure sense of poetic beauty ? 
Here in No. 84 we have a poem which, for what I can 
only call absolute beauty, is simply perfect. 

Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, 

That rollest from the gorgeous gloom 
Of evening over brake and bloom 

And meadow, slowly breathing bare 

The round of space, and rapt below 

Thro' all the dewy-tassell'd wood, 
And shadowing down the horned flood 

In ripples, fan my brows, and blow 

The fever from my cheek, and sigh 

The full new life that feeds thy breath 
Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death 

111 brethren, let the fancy fly 



42 The English Novel 

From belt to belt of crimson seas 

On leagues of odor streaming far 

To where in yonder orient star 
A hundi^ed spirits whisper 'Peace.' 

And finally we are able to see from his own words 
that he is not ignorantly resisting the influences of science, 
but that he knows science, reveres it and understands its 
precise place and function. What he terms in the follow- 
ing poem (113 of /;z Memoriani) Knozvledge and Wisdom 
are what we have been speaking of as Science and 
Poetry. 

Who loves not Knowledge ? Who shall rail 
Against her beauty ? May she mix 
With men and prosper ! Who shall fix 

Her pillars ? Let her work prevail. 



. Let her know her place; 
She is the second, not the first. 

A higher hand must make her mild. 

If all be not in vain ; and guide 
Her footsteps, moving side by side 

With wisdom, like the younger child : 

For she is earthly of the mind, 

But Wisdom heavenly of the Soul. 

O friend, who earnest to thy goal 
So early, leaving me behind, 

I would the great world grew like thee 
Who grewest not alone in power 
And knowledge, but by year and hour 

In reverence and in charity. 

If then, regarding Tennyson as fairly a representative 
victim of Science, we find him still preaching the poet's 
gospel of beauty, as comprehending the evangel of faith, 



Ajid the Principle of its Development. 43 

hope and charity, only preaching it in those newer and 
finer forms with which science itself has endowed him ; 
if we find his poetry just so much stronger and richer 
and riper by as much as he has been trained and beaten 
and disciplined with the stern questions which scientific 
speculation has put — questions which you will find pre- 
sented in their most sombre terribleness in Tennyson's 
Tivo Voices ; if finally we find him steadily regarding 
science as knoivlcdge which only the true poet can vivify 
into wisdom : — then I say, life is too short to waste any 
of it in listening to those who, in the face of this history, 
still prophesy that Science is to destroy Poetry. 

Nothing, indeed, would be easier than to answer all 
this argument upon a priori grounds : this argument is, 
in brief, that wonder and mystery are the imagination's 
material, and that science is to explain away all mystery. 
But what a crude view is this of explanation ! The mo- 
ment you examine the process, you find that at bottom 
explanation is simply the reduction of unfamiliar mys- 
teries to terms of familiar mysteries. For simplest ex- 
ample : here is a mass of conglomerate : science explains 
that it is composed of a great number of pebbles which 
have become fastened together by a natural cement. But 
after all, is not one pebble as great a mystery as a moun- 
tain of conglomerate ? though we are familiar with the 
pebble, and unfamiliar with the other. Now to the wise 
man, the poet, familiarity with a mystery brings no con- 
tempt ; to explanation of science, supremely fascinating 
as it is, but opens up a new world of wonders, but adds 
to old mysteries. Indeed, the wise searcher into nature 
always finds, as a poet has declared, that 

. . ."In seeking to undo 

One riddle, and to find the true 

I knit a hundred others new." 



44 The English Novel 

And so, away with this folly. Science, instead of being 
the enemy of poetry, is its quartermaster and commissary 
— it forever purveys for poetry, and just so much more 
as it shall bring man into contact with nature, just so 
much more large and intense and rich will be the poetry 
of the future and more abundant in its forms. 

And here we may advance to our second class, who 
believe that the poetry of the future is to be democratic 
and formless. 

I need quote but a few scraps from characteristic sen- 
tences here and there in a recent paper of Whitman's, in 
order to present a perfectly fair view of his whole doc- 
trine. When, for instance, he declares that Tennyson's 
poetry is not the poetry of the future because, although 
it is " the highest order of verbal melody, exquisitely 
clean and pure and almost always perfumed like the tube- 
rose to an extreme of sweetness," yet it has " never one 
democratic page," and is " never free, naive poetry, but 
involved, labored, quite sophisticated;" when we find 
him bragging of "the measureless viciousness of the 
great radical republic" (the United States of course) 
"with its ruffianly nominations and elections; its loud, 
ill-pitched voice, utterly regardless whether the verb 
agrees with the nominative ; its fights, errors, eructations, 
repulsions, dishonesties, audacities ; those fearful and 
varied, long and continued storm-and-stress stages (so 
offensive to the well-regulated, college-bred mind), where- 
with nature, history and time block out nationalities more 
powerful than the past ; " and when finally we hear him 
tenderly declaring that "meanwhile democracy waits the 
coming of its bards in silence and in twilight — but 'tis 
the twilight of dawn ; " — we are in sufficient possession 
of the distinctive catch-words which summarize his 
doctrine. 



Aiid the Principle of its Development. 45 

In examining it, a circumstance occurs to me at the 
outset which throws a strange but effective hght upon 
the whole argument. It seems curious to reflect that the 
two poets who have most avowedly written for the people, 
who have professed most distinctively to represent and 
embody the thought of the people, and to be bone of the 
people's bone, and flesh of the people's flesh, are pre- 
cisely the two who have most signally failed of all popu- 
lar acceptance and who have most exclusively found 
audience at the other extreme of culture. These are 
Wordsworth and Vv'hitman. We all know how strenu- 
ously and faithfully Wordsworth believed that in using 
the simplest words and treating the lowliest themes, he 
was bringing poetry back near to the popular heart ; yet 
Wordsworth's greatest admirer is Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
the apostle of culture, the farthest remove from anything 
that could be called popular ; and in point of fact it is pro- 
bable that many a peasant who would feel his blood stir in 
hearing A maiis a man for a' that, would grin and guffaw if 
you should read him Wordsworth's Lavibs zn^ Peter Grays. 

And a precisely similar fate has met Whitman. Pro- 
fessing to be a mudsill and glorying in it, chanting de- 
mocracy and the shirt-sleeves and equal rights, declaring 
that he is nothing if not one of the people ; nevertheless 
the people, the democracy, will yet have nothing to do 
with him, and it is safe to say that his sole audience has 
lain among such representatives of the highest culture as 
Emerson and the English illMninated. 

The truth is, that if closely examined. Whitman, in- 
stead of being a true democrat, is simply the most incor- 
rigible of aristocrats masquing in a peasant's costume ; 
and his poetry, instead of being the natural outcome of 
a fresh young democracy, is a product which would be 
impossible except in a highly civilized society. 



4-6 The English Novel 



III. 



At our last meeting we endeavored to secure some 
solid basis for our ideas of form in general, and to develop 
thereupon some conceptions of form in art, and especially 
of literary form, which would enable us to see our way 
clear among misconceptions of this subject which prevail. 
We there addressed ourselves towards considering 
particularly three of these misconceptions. The first 
we examined was that which predicts the total death of 
imaginative literature — poetry, novels and all — in conse- 
quence of a certain supposed quality of imagination by 
virtue of which, like some ruin-haunting animals, it 
cannot live in the light ; so that the destructive explana- 
tions of advancing science, it was apprehended, would 
gradually force all our imaginative energies back into 
the dark crevices of old fable and ruined romance, until 
finally, penetrating these also, it would exterminate the 
species. We first tested this case by laying it alongside 
the historic facts in the case : confining our view to 
England, we found that science and poetry had been 
developing alongside of each other ever since early in 
the seventeenth century; inquiring into the general 
effect of this long contact, we could only find that it was 
to make our general poetry greatly richer in substance 
and finer in form ; and upon testing this abstract conclu- 
sion by a concrete examination of Tennyson — as a poet 
most likely to show the influence of science, because 
himself most exposed to it, indeed most saturated with 
it — we found from several readings in In Memoriam that 



And the Principle of its Development. 47 

whether as to love or friendship, or the sacredness of 
marriage, or the pure sense of beauty, or the true relation 
of knowledge to wisdom, or faith in God, the effect of 
science had been on the whole to broaden the concep- 
tions and to clarify the forms in which they were 
expressed by this great poet. 

And having thus appealed to facts, we found further 
that in the nature of things no such destruction could 
follow ; that what we call explanation in science is at 
bottom only a reduction of unfamiliar mysteries to terms 
of familiar mysteries, and that, since to the true imagina- 
tive mind, whether of poet or novelist, the mysteries of 
this world grow all the greater as they grow more 
familiar, the necessary effect of scientific explanations is 
at last the indefinite increase of food for the imagination. 
The modern imagination, indeed, shall still love mystery ; 
but it is not the shallow mystery of those small darks 
which are enclosed by caves and crumbling dungeons, it 
is the unfathomable mystery of the sunlight and the sun ; 
it is this inexplicable contradictory shadow of the infinite 
which is projected upon the finite ; it is this multitudinous 
flickering of all the other egos upon the tissue of my 
ego,- these are the lights and shades and vaguenesses of 
mystery in which the modern imaginative effort delights. 
And here I cannot help adding to what was said on this 
subject in the last lecture, by declaring to every young 
man who may entertain the hope of poethood, that at 
this stage of the world you need not dream of winning 
the attention of sober people with your poetry unless 
that poetry, and your soul behind it, are informed and 
saturated at least with the largest final conceptions of 
current science. I do not mean that you are to write 
" Loves of the Plants ;" I do not mean that you are to 
versify Biology ; but I mean that you must be so far 



48 The English Novel 

instinct with the scientific thought of the time that your 
poetic conceptions will rush as it were from under these 
pure, cold facts of science like those Alpine torrents 
which flow out of glaciers. Or, — to change the figure 
for the better — just as the chemist, in causing chlorine 
and hydrogen to form hydrochloric acid, finds that he 
must not only put the chlorine and hydrogen together, 
but he must put them together in the presence of light 
in order to make them combine ; so the poet of our 
time will find that his poetic combinations, his grandest 
syntheses of wisdom, own this law ; and they, too, must 
be effected in the presence of the awful light of science. 
Returning to our outline of the last lecture : After we 
had discussed this matter, we advanced to the second of 
the great misconceptions of the function of form in art — 
that which holds that the imaginative effort of the future 
will be better than that of the present, and that this im- 
provement will come through a progress towards form- 
lessness. After quoting several sentences from Whitman 
which seemed to contain the substantial argument — 
to-wit, that the poetry of the future is to be signalized by 
independence of form, and is, by virtue of this indepen- 
dence, to gain strength, and become a democratic poetry, 
as contrasted with the supposed weak and aristocratic 
poetry of the present — I called your attention to a notable 
circumstance which seems to throw a curious light along 
this inquiry : that circumstance being that the two Eng- 
lish poets who have most exclusively laid claim to re- 
present the people in poetry, to express nothing but the 
people's heart in the people's words, namely Words- 
worth and Whitman, are precisely the two w^hose audi- 
ence has been most exclusiv^ely confined to the other 
extreme of culture. Wordsworth, instead of appealing 
to Hodge, Nokes, and Stiles ; instead of being found in 



And the Principle of its Development. 49 

penny editions on the collier's shelves ; is most cherished 
by Mr. Matthew Arnold, the high-priest of culture. And 
so with Whitman : we may say with safety that no 
preacher was ever so decisively rejected by his ov/n : con- 
tinually crying democracy in the market-place, and crying 
it in forms or no-forms professing to be nothing but pro- 
ducts of the democratic spirit; nevertheless the democracy 
everywhere have turned a deaf ear, and it is only with a 
few of the most retired thinkers of our time that Whit- 
man has found even a partial acceptance. 

And finally, by way of showing a reason for this state 
of things in Whitman's case, the last lecture closed with 
the assertion that Whitman's poetry, in spite of his belief 
that it is democratic, is really aristocratic to the last 
degree ; and instead of belonging, as he asserts to an 
early and fresh-thoughted stage of a republic, is really 
poetry which would be impossible except in a highly 
civilized state of society. 

Here, then, let us take up the thread of that argument. 
In the quotations which were given from Whitman's 
paper, we have really the ideal democracy and democrat 
of this school. It is curious to reflect in the first place 
that in point of fact no such democracy, no such demo- 
crat, has ever existed in this country. For example : 
when Whitman tells us of "the measureless viciousness 
of the great radical republic, with its ruffianly nominations 
and elections ; its loud ill-pitched voice ; its fights, er- 
rors, eructations, dishonesties, audacities ; " ct cetera : 
when he tells us this, with a sort of caressing touch 
upon all the bad adjectives, rolling the "errors" and 
the " audacities " and the " viciousness " under his 
tongue and faithfully believing that the strength which 
recommends his future poetry is to come out of vicious- 
ness and ruffianly elections and the like ; let us inquire, 
3 



50 The English Novel 

to what representative facts in our history does this 
picture correspond ; what great democrat who has helped 
to " block out" this present republic, sat for this portrait ? 
Is it George Washington, that beautiful, broad tranquil 
spirit whom, I sometimes think, even we Americans have 
never yet held quite at his true value, — is it Washington 
who was vicious, dishonest, audacious, combative ? But 
Washington had some hand in blocking out this republic. 
Or what would our courtly and philosophic Thomas 
Jefferson look like, if you should put this slouch hat on 
him, and open his shirt-front at the bosom, and set him 
to presiding over a ruffianly nomination ? Yet he had 
some hand in blocking out this republic. In one of 
Whitman's poems I find him crying out to Americans, 
in this same strain : " O lands ! would you be freer than 
all that has ever been before ? If you would be freer than 
all that has been before, come listen to me." And this is 
the deliverance : 

" Fear grace — fear elegance, civilization, delicatesse, 
Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice ; 

• Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature, 
Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of States 

and men." 

And in another line, he rejoices in America because — 
" Here are the roughs, beards, . . . combativeness, and the 
like". 

But where are these roughs, these beards, and this com- 
bativeness ? Were the Adamses and Benjamin Franklin 
roughs ? was it these who taught us to make ruffianly 
nominations ? But they had some hand in blocking out 
this republic. In short, leaving each one to extend this 
list of names for himself, it may be fairly said that no- 
where in history can one find less of that ruggedness 



And the Principle of its Development. 5 1 

which Whitman regards as the essential of democracy ; 
nowhere more of that grace which he considers fatal to 
it, than among the very representative democrats who 
blocked out this republic. In truth, when Whitman cries 
"fear the mellow sweet," and "beware the mortal ripe- 
ning of nature", we have an instructive instance of the 
extreme folly into which a man may be led by mistaking 
a metaphor for an argument. The argument here is, you 
observe, that because an apple in the course of nature 
rots soon after it mellows, argal a man cannot mellow 
his spirit with culture without decaying soon afterwards. 
Of course it is sufficient only to reflect non scqiiitiir ; for 
it is precisely the difference between the man and the 
apple, that, whereas every apple must rot after ripeness, no 
nian is bound to. 

If therefore after an inquiry ranging from Wash- 
ington and Jefferson down to William Cullen Bryant 
(that surely unrugged and graceful figure who was 
so often called the finest American gentleman) and 
Lowell, and Longfellow, and the rest who are really the 
men that are blocking out our republic, if we find not a 
single representative American democrat to whom any 
of these pet adjectives apply, — not one who is measure- 
lessly vicious, or ruffianly, or audacious, or purposely 
rugged, or contemptuous towards the graces of life, — 
then we are obliged to affirm that the whole ideal drawn 
by Whitman is a fancy picture with no counterpart in 
nature. It is perfectly true that we have ruffianly nomi- 
nations ; but we have them because the real democrats 
who govern our republic, who represent our democracy, 
stay away from nominating conventions and leave them 
to the ruffians. Surely no one can look with the most 
cursory eye upon our everyday American life without 
seeing that the real advance of our society goes on not 



52 The English Novel 

only without, but largely in spite of that ostensible ap- 
paratus, legislative, executive, judicial which we call the 
Government, &c. ; that really the most effective legisla- 
tion in our country is that which is enacted in the breasts 
of the individual democrats who compose it. And this 
is true democratic growth, every day ; more and more, 
each man perceives that the shortest and most effectual 
method of securing his own rights is to respect the rights 
of others ; and so every day do we less and less need 
outside interference in our individual relations ; so that 
every day we approach nearer and nearer towards that 
ideal government in which each man is, mainly, his own 
legislator, his own governor or president, and his own 
judge, and in which the public government is mainly a 
concert of measures for the common sanitation and 
police. 

But again : it is true as Whitman says that we have 
dishonesties ; but we punish them, they are not repre- 
sentative, they have no more relation to democracy than 
the English thief has to English aristocracy. 

From what spirit of blindness is it alleged that these 
things are peculiar to our democracy ? Whitman here ex- 
plicitly declares that the over-dainty Englishman " can 
not stomach the high-life below stairs of our social status 
so far ;" this high-life consisting of the measureless vi- 
ciousness, the dishonesty, and the like. Cannot stomach 
it, no ; who could ? But how absurd to come down to 
this republic, to American society for these things ! 
Alas, I know an Englishman, who, three hundred years 
ago, found these same things in that aristocracy there ; 
and he too, thank heaven, could not stomach them, for 
he has condemned them in a sonnet which is the solace 
of all sober-thoughted ages. I mean Shakspeare, and his 
sonnet 



And the Principle of its Development, 5 3 



Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, — 
As, to behold desert a beggar born, 
And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, 
And purest faith unhappily foresworn. 
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced, 
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, 
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, 
And strength by limping sway disabled, 
And art made tongue-tied by authority. 
And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill. 
And simple truth miscalled simplicity, 
And captive good attending captain ill : 

Tired of all these, from these would I be gone. 
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. 

It is true that we have bad manners ; yet among the 
crowds at the Centennial Exposition it was universally- 
remarked that in no country in the world could such 
vast multitudes of people have assembled day after day 
with so few arrests by the police, with so little disorder, 
and with such an apparent universal and effective sentiment 
of respect for the law. 

Now if we carry the result of this inquiry over into 
art ; if we are presented with a poetry which professes to 
be democratic because it — the poetry — is measurelessly 
vicious, purposely eructant, striving after ruggedness, 
despising grace, like the democracy described by Whit- 
man ; then we reply that as matter of fact there never 
was any such American democracy and that the poetry 
which represents it has no constituency. And herein 
seems a most abundant solution of the fact just now 
brought to your notice, that the actually existing democ- 
racy have never accepted Whitman. But here we are 
met with the cry of strength and manfulness. Every- 
where throughout Whitman's poetry the " rude muscle," 



54 The E?iglish Novel 

the brawn, the physical bigness of the American prairie, 
the sinew of the Western backwoodsman, are apotheo- 
sized, and all these, as Whitman asserts, are fitly chanted 
in his " savage song." 

Here, then, is a great stalwart man, in perfect health, 
all brawn and rude muscle, set up before us as the ideal 
of strength. Let us examine this strength a little. 
For one, I declare that I do not find it impressive- 
Yonder, in a counting-room — alas, in how many 
counting-rooms ! — a young man with weak eyes bends 
over a ledger, and painfully casts up the figures day by 
day, on pitiful wages, to support his mother, or to send 
his younger brother to school, or some such matter. If 
we watch the yoimg man when he .takes down his hat, 
lays off his ink-splotched office-coat, and starts home for 
dinner, we perceive that he is in every respect the opposite 
of the stalwart Whitman ideal ; his chest is not huge, his 
legs are inclined to be pipe-stems, and his dress is like 
that of any other book-keeper. Yet the weak-eyed pipe- 
stem-legged young man impresses me as more of a man, 
more of a democratic man, than the tallest of Whitman's 
roughs ; to the eye of my spirit there is more strength in 
this man's daily endurance of petty care and small weari- 
ness for love ; more of the sort of stuff which makes a 
real democracy and a sound republic, than in an army of 
Whitman's unshaven loafers. 

I know — and count it among the privileges of my life 
that I do — a woman who has spent her whole life in bed 
for twenty years past, confined by a curious form of 
spinal disease which prevents locomotion and which in 
spite of constant pain and disturbance leaves the system 
long unworn. Day by day she lies helpless, at the 
mercy of all those tyrannical small needs which become 
so large under such circumstances ; every meal must be 



And the Principle of its Development. 5 5 

brought to her, a drink of water must be handed ; and 
she is not rich, to command service. Withal her nature 
is of the brightest and most energetic sort. Yet, sur- 
rounded by these unspeakable pettinesses, enclosed in 
this cage of contradictions, the woman has made herself 
the centre of an adoring circle of the brightest people ; 
her room is called " Sunnyside ;" when brawny men are 
tired they go to her for rest, when people in the rudest 
physical health are sick of life they go to her for the cura- 
tive virtue of her smiles. Now this woman has not so 
much rude muscle in her whole body as Whitman's man 
has in his little finger : she is so fragile that long ago 
some one called her " White Flower," and by this name 
she is much known ; it costs her as much labor to press a 
friend's hand as it costs Whitman's rough to fell a tree ; 
regarded from the point of view of brawn and sinew, she 
is simply absurd ; yet to the eye of my spirit there is more 
manfulness in one moment of her loving and self-sacri- 
ficing existence than in an aeon of muscle-growth and 
sinew-breeding ; and hers is the manfulness which is the 
only solution of a true democrat, hers is the manfulness 
of which only can a republic be built. A republic is the 
government of the spirit ; a republic depends upon the 
self-control of each member : you cannot make a republic 
out of muscles and prairies and Rocky mountains; re- 
publics are made of the spirit. 

Nay, when we think of it, how little is it a matter of 
the future, how entirely is it a matter of the past, when 
people come running at us with rude muscle and great 
mountain, and such matters of purely physical bigness to 
shake our souls? How long ago is it that they began to 
put great bearskin caps on soldiers with a view to make 
them look grisly and formidable when advancing on the 
enemy ? It is so long ago that the practice has survived 



56 The English Novel 

mainly as ceremonial, and the little boys on the streets 
now laugh at this ferociousness when the sappers and 
miners come by who affect this costume. 

Yet, here in the nineteenth century we behold artists 
purposely setting bearskin caps upon their poetry to 
make it effective. This sort of thing never yet succeeded 
as against Anglo-Saxon people. I cannot help thinking 
here of old Lord Berners' account translated from 
Froissart, of how the Genoese cross-bowmen attempted 
to frighten the English warriors at the battle of Crecy. 
" Whan the Genowayes were assembled togayder, and 
beganne to aproche, they made a great leape and crye, 
to abasshe thenglysshmen, but they stode styll, and 
styredde not for all that ; thane the Genowayes agayne 
the seconde tyme made another leape, and a fell crye, and 
stepped forward a lytell, and thenglysshmen remeved not 
one fote ; thirdly, agayne they leapt and cryed, and went 
forthe tyll they come within shotte ; thane shot feersley 
with their crosbowes ; than thenglysshe archers stept 
forthe one pase, and lette fly their arowes so hotly, 
and so thycke, that it semed snowe ; when the Gen- 
owayes felt the arowes persynge through heedes, armes, 
and brestes, many of them cast downe their cros- 
bowes, and dyde cutte their strynges, and retourned 
dysconfited." 

And so the Poetry of the Future has advanced upon us 
with a great leap and a fell cry, relying upon its loud, 
ill-pitched voice, but the democracy has stirred not for all 
that. Perhaps we may fairly say, gentlemen, it is five 
hundred years too late to attempt to capture English- 
men with a yell. 

I think it interesting to compare Whitman's often 
expressed contempt for poetic beauty — he taunts the 
young magazine writers of the present time with having 



And the Principle of its Development. 5 7 

the beauty disease — with some utterances of one who 
praised the true function of ruggedness in works the 
world will not soon forget. I mean Thomas Carlyle, 
who has so recently passed into the Place where the 
strong and the virtuous and the beautiful souls assemble 
themselves. In one of Carlyle's essays he speaks as 
follows of Poetic Beauty. These words scarcely sound 
as if they came from the lover of Danton and Mirabeau : 

" It dwells and is born in the inmost Spirit of Man, 
united to all love of Virtue, to all true belief in God ; or 
rather, it is one with this love and this belief, another 
phase of the same highest principle in the mysterious 
infinitude of the human Soul. To apprehend this beauty 
of poetry, in its full and purest brightness, is not easy, 
but difficult ; thousands on thousands eagerly read poems, 
and attain not the smallest taste of it; yet to all uncor- 
rupted hearts, some effulgences of this heavenly glory 
are here and there revealed ; and to apprehend it clearly 
and wholly, to require and maintain a sense of heart that 
sees and worships it, is the last perfection of all humane 
culture." 

In the name of all really manful democracy, in the 
name of the true strength that only can make our repub- 
lic reputable among the nations, let us repudiate the 
strength that is no stronger than a human biceps ; let us 
repudiate the manfulness that averages no more than six 
feet high. My democrat, the democrat whom I contem- 
plate with pleasure ; the democrat who is to write or to 
read the poetry of the future, may have a mere thread for 
his biceps, yet he shall be strong enough to handle hell, 
he shall play ball with the earth, and albeit his stature 
may be no more than a boy's, he shall still be taller than 
the great redwoods of California ; his height shall be the 
height of great resolution, and love and faith and beauty 

3=^ 



58 The English Novel 

and knowledge and subtle meditation ; his head shall be 
forever among the stars. 

But here we are met with the cry of freedom. This 
poetry is free, it is asserted, because it is independent of 
form. But this claim is also too late. It should have 
been made at least before the French Revolution. We 
all know what that freedom means in politics which is 
independent of form, of law. It means myriad-fold 
slavery to a mob. As in politics, so in art. Once for 
all, in art, to be free is not to be independent of any form, 
it is to be master of many forms. Does the young ver- 
sifier of the Whitman school fancy that he is free because 
under the fond belief that he is yielding himself to nature, 
stopping not the words lest he may fail to make what 
Whitman proudly calls " a savage song," he allows him- 
self to be blown about by every wind of passion ? Is a 
ship free because, Vv^ithout rudder or sail, it is turned 
loose to the winds, and has no master but nature ? 
Nature is the tyrant of tyrants. Now, just as that free- 
dom of the ship on the sea means shipwreck, so indepen- 
dence of form in art means death. Here one recurs 
with pleasure to the aphorism cited in the last lecture ; 
in art, as elsewhere," he who will not answer to the rudder 
shall answer to the rocks." I find all the great artists of 
time striving after this same freedom ; but it is not by 
destroying, it is by extending the forms of art, that all 
sane and sober souls hope to attain. In a letter of 
Beethoven's to the Arch-duke Rudolph, written in 1819, 
I find him declaring " But freedom and progress are our 
true aim in the world of art, just as in the great creation 
at large." 

We have seen how in the creation at large progress is 
effected by the continual multiplication of new forms. 
It was this advance which Beethoven wished : to become 



And the Principle of its Development. 59 

master of new and more beautiful forms, not to abolish 
form. In a letter of his to Matthisson, as early as 1800 
accompanying a copy of Adelaide, we may instructively 
gather what he thought of this matter: "Indeed even 
now I send you Adelaide with a feeling of timidity. 
You know yourself what changes the lapse of some years 
brings forth in an artist who continues to make progress ; 
the greater the advances we make in art the less we are 
satisfied with our works of an early date." This unstu- 
died declaration becomes full of significance when we 
remember that this same Adelaide is still held, by the 
common consent of all musicians, to be the most perfect 
song-form in music ; and it is given to young composers 
as a type and model from which all other forms are to be 
developed. We may sum up the whole matter by apply- 
ing to these persons who desire formlessness, words 
vv'hich were written of those who have been said to desire 
death : 

Whatever crazy Sorrow saith, 

No life that breathes with human breath 

Has ever truly longed for death. 

'Tis hfe whereof our nerves are scant, 
O life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that I want." 

In art, form and chaos are so nearly what life and death 
are in nature, that we do not greatly change this stanza 
if we read : 

'Tis form whereof our art is scant, 
O form, not chaos, for which we pant, 
More form, and fuller, that I want." 

I find some deliverances in Epictetus which speak so 
closely to more than one of the points just discussed 



6o The Enelish Novel 



<i> 



that I must quote a sentence or two. "What then ", he 
says — in the chapter "About Freedom" "is that which 
makes a man free from hindrance and makes him his 
own master ? For weahh does not do it, nor consulship, 
nor provincial government, nor royal power ; but some- 
thing else must be discovered. What then is that which 
when we write makes us free from hindrance and unim- 
peded. The knowledge of the art of writing. What 
then is it (which gives freedom) in playing the lute ? The 
science of playing the lute." If Whitman's doctrine is 
true, the proper method of acquiring freedom on the lute 
is to bring lute-music to that point where the loud 
jangling chord produced by a big hand sweeping at 
random across the strings is to take the place of the 
finical tunes and harmonies now held in esteem. "There- 
fore " continues Epictetus, " in life, also, it is the science 
of life . . . When you wish the body to be sound, is it in 
your power or not ? — It is not. When you wish it to be 
healthy? Neither is this in my power." (I complain of 
Whitman's democracy that it has no provision for sick, 
or small, or puny, or plain-featured, or hump-backed, or 
any deformed people, and that his democracy is really 
the worst kind of aristocracy, being an aristocracy of 
nature's favorites in the matter of muscle.) And so of 
estate, house, horses, life and death, Epictetus con- 
tinues ; these are not in our power, they cannot make us 
free. So that, in another chapter, he cries : This is the 
true athlete, the man who exercises himself against such 
appearances. Stay, wretch, do not be carried away. 
Great is the combat, divine is the work : it is for king- 
ship, for freedom, for happiness. 

And lastly, the Poetry of the Future holds that all 
modern poetry, Tennyson particularly, is dainty and 
over-perfumed, and Whitman speaks of it with that con- 



A7id the Principle of its Development. 6 1 

tempt which he everywhere affects for the dandy. But 
what age of time ever yielded such a dandy as the founder 
of this school, Whitman himself? The simpering beau 
who is the product of the tailor's art is certainly absurd 
enough ; but what difference is there between that and 
the other dandy-upside- down who from equal motives 
of affectation throws away coat and vest, dons a slouch 
•hat, opens his shirt so as to expose his breast, and in- 
dustriously circulates his portrait, thus taken, in his own 
books." And this dandyism — the dandyism of the 
roustabout — I find in Whitman's poetry from beginning 
to end. Everywhere it is conscious of itself, everywhere 
it is analysing itself, everywhere it is posing to see if it 
cannot assume a naive and striking attitude, everywhere 
it is screwing up its eyes, not into an eyeglass like the 
conventional dandy, but into an expression supposed to 
be fearsomely rough and barbaric and frightful to the 
terror-stricken reader ; and it is almost safe to say that 
one half of Whitman's poetic work has consisted of a 
detailed description of the song he is going to sing. It 
is the extreme of sophistication in writing. 

But if we must have dandyism in our art, surely the 
softer sort, which at least leans toward decorum and 
gentility, is preferable ; for that at worst becomes only 
laughable, while the rude dandyism, when it does acquire 
a factitious interest by being a blasphemy against real 
manhood, is simply tiresome. 

I have thus dwelt upon these claims of the Whitman 
school, not so much because of any intrinsic weight they 
possess, as because they are advanced in such taking and 
sacred names, — of democracy, of manhood, of freedom, 
of progress. Upon the most earnest examination, I can 
find it nothing but wholly undemocratic ; not manful, 
but dandy ; not free, because the slave of nature ; not 



62 The En polish Novel 



i3 ' 



progressive, because its whole momentuin is derived from 
the physically-large which ceased to astonish the world 
ages ago, in comparison with spiritual greatness. 

Indeed, this matter has been pushed so far, with the 
apparent, but wholly unreal sanction of so many influen- 
tial names, that in speaking to those who may be poets 
of the future, I cannot close these hasty words apon the 
Whitman school without a fervent protest, in the name 
of all art and all artists, against a poetry which has 
painted a great scrawling picture of the human body, 
and has written under it: " T/iis is tJic soul ;" which shouts 
a profession of religion in every line, but of a religion 
that, when examined, reveals no tenet, no rubric, save 
that a man must be natural, must abandon himself to 
every passion ; and which constantly roars its belief in 
God, but with a camerado air as if it were patting the 
Deity on the back, and bidding Him, Cheer tip, and hope 
for further encouragement. 

We are here arrived at a very fitting point to pass on 
and consider that third misconception of the relation be- 
tween science and art, which has been recently formu- 
lated by M. Emile Zola in his work called Le Roman 
Experimental. Zola's name has been so widely asso- 
ciated with a certain class of novels, that I am fortunately 
under no necessity to describe them, and I need only 
say that the work in question is a formal reply to a great 
number of objections which have come from many quar- 
ters as to the characters and events which Zola's novels 
have brought before the public. 

His book, though a considerable volume, may be said 
to consist of two sentences which the author has varied 
with great adroitness into many forms. These two sen- 
tences I may sum up, as follows: (i) every novel must 
hereafter be the entirely unimaginative record of an ex- 



And the Principle of its Development. 63 

periment in human passion ; and (2) every writer of the 
romantic school in France, particularly Victor Hugo, is 
an ass. 

You are not to suppose that in this last sentiment I 
have strengthened Zola's expressions. A single quota- 
tion will show sufficient authority. As, for example, 
where M. Zola cries out to those who are criticizing 
him: "Everyone says: 'Ah yes, the naturalists! they 
are those men with dirty hands who want all novels to 
be written in slang, and choose the most disgusting sub- 
jects.' Not at all ! you He ! ... Do not say that I 
am idiot enough to wish to paint nothing but the 
gutter." 

But with this quarrel we are not here concerned ; I 
simply wish to examine in the briefest way Zola's pro- 
position to convert the novel into a work of science. 
His entire doctrine may be fairly, indeed amply gathered 
in the following quotations : 

" We continue by our observations and experiments the work 
of the physiologist, who has himself employed that of the physicist 
and the chemist. We after a fashion pursue scientific psychology 
in order to complete scientific physiology ; and in order to com- 
plete the evolution, we need only carry to the study of nature and 
man the invaluable tool of the experimental method. In a word, 
we should work upon characters, passions, human and social facts, 
as the physicist and chemist work with inorganic bodies, as the 
physiologist works with living organisms. Determinism controls 
everything. 

" This, then, is what constitutes the experimental novel, — to 
understand the mechanism of human phenomena, to show the 
machinery of intellectual and emotional manifestations as physi- 
ology shall explain them to us under the influence of heredity and 
surrounding circumstances ; then to show man living in the social 
milieu which he has himself produced, and which he modifies 
every day, while at the same time experiencing in his turn a con- 
tinual transformation. So we rest on physiology; we take man 



64 The English Novel 

isolated from the hands of the physiologist to continue the solution 
of the problem and to solve scientifically the question, How men 
live as members of society. — We are, in a word, experimental phi- 
losophers, showing by experiment how a passion exhibits itself in 
certain social surroundings. The day when we shall understand 
the mechanism of this passion, it may be treated, reduced, made 
as inoffensive as possible." 

These propositions need not detain us long. In the 
first place, let us leave the vagueness of abstract asser- 
tions and, coming down to the concrete, let us ask who 
is to make the experiment recorded in the novel ? Zola 
says, "We (the novelists) are experimental philosophers, 
showing by experiment how a passion exhibits itself in 
certain social surroundings." Very well ; in one of 
Zola's most popular novels, the heroine Nana, after a 
remarkable career, dies of small-pox; and a great natura- 
listic ado is made over this death. A correspondent of 
the Herald, writing from Paris, says : " In a very few 
days we are to be treated to the stage version of Nana, 
at the Ambigu. Nana, it will be remembered, dies at the 
end of the story of small-pox. We are to be given every 
' incident of the agony, every mark of the small-pox. Pretty 
Mile. Massin (who is to play this death-scene) is to be the 
crowning attraction of this new play. . . , We shall be 
shown a real death of small-pox, or the nearest possible ap- 
proach to it. Mile. Massin, who is to sustain the pleasing 
part of the "heroine," will make her pretty face hideous 
for the occasion. At half past 1 1 every evening she will 
issue from behind the drapery of a bed, clad only in the 
most indispensable of nightly raiment — and that "in most 
admired disorder " — her neck, cheeks and forehead dis- 
figured, changed and unrecognizable for simulated pus- 
tules. At twenty minutes to 12 the pustules will be too 
much for her, and she will expire. At a quarter to 12 



And the Principle of its Development. 65 

the deafening applause of the pubhc will call her to life 
again, and she will bow her acknowledgments." 

Applying Zola's theory, sociology is to find here a 
very instructive record of how a woman such as Nana 
would comport herself when dying of small-pox ; and 
furthermore, his description of it must be an exact record 
of an experiment in death from small-pox conducted by 
M. Zola in person. But now recurring to our question, 
let us ask, how could M. Zola conduct this experiment ? 
It would certainly be inconvenient for him to catch the 
small-pox and die, with a view to recording his sensa- 
tions ; and yet it is perfectly apparent that the conditions 
of scientific experiment could not be satisfied in any 
other wav. M. Zola would probably reply with effusion, 
that he had taken pains to go to a smail-pox hospital and 
to study with great care the behavior of a patient dying 
with that disease. But, we immediately rejoin, this is 
very far from what his theory bound him to show us; his 
theory bound him to show us not some person, any 
person, dying of small-pox, but Nana with all her indi- 
viduality derived from heredity and from her own spon- 
taneous variation — it was Nana dying of small-pox that 
he must set before us ; one person dies one way and 
another person dies another way, even of the same dis- 
ease ; Smith, a very tragic person, would make a death- 
scene full of tragic message and gesture; Brown might 
close his eyes and pass without a word ; Nana, particu- 
larly, with her peculiar career and striking individuality, 
would naturally make a peculiar and striking death. 
Now since Nana is purely a creation of Zola, (unless in- 
deed the novel is a biography, which is not pretended) 
Zola is the only person in the world who understands 
Nana's feelings in death or on any occasion ; and this 
being so, it is simply impossible that Zola could make a 



66 The Eupiish Novel 



i> 



scientific experiment of Nana's death fi-om small-pox 
without dying himself. This seems so absurd that one 
goes back to Le Roman Experimental to see if Zola's 
idea of a scientific experiment has not something pecu- 
liar about it ; and one quickly finds that it has. It is in 
fact interesting to observe ihat though Zola has this 
word experiment continually on his lips, yet he never 
means that the novelist is to conduct a real, gross, down- 
right, actual brute of an experiment ; and the word with 
him is wholly Pickwickian, signifying no more than that 
the novelist, availing himself of such realistic helps as he 
can find in hospitals and the like, is to evolve therefrom 
something which he believes to be the natural course of 
things. Examine the book wherever you may, the 
boasted experiment, the pivot of the whole system, fades 
into this. 

The experiment of Zola is as if a professor of chemistry, 
knowing something of the properties of given substances 
desiring to see how a certain molecule would behave 
itself in the presence of a certain other molecule, 
hitherto untried in this connection, instead of going into 
his laboratory and bringing the molecules together and 
observing what they actually did, should quietly sit 
before his desk and write oft" a comfortable account of 
how he thought these molecules would behave, judging 
from his previous knowledge of their properties. It is 
still more interesting to find that Zola is apparently 
unconscious of the difference between these two modes 
of experiment. About this unconsciousness I have my 
own theory. I think it entirely probable that if these 
two kinds of experiment were described to Zola he 
would maintain with perfect good faith that they were 
exactly the same. There is a phase of error — perhaps 
we may call it hallucination — in which certain sorts of 



A?id the Principle of its Development. 6"] 

minds come to believe that two things which have been 
habitually associated are always the same. For instance, 
a friend of mine has told me that a certain estimable 
teacher of the French language, who, after carrying on 
his vocation for many years, during which English and 
French became equally instinctive tongues to him, was 
accustomed to maintain that English and French were 
absolutely one and the same language. " When you 
say zvatcr," he was accustomed to argue to my friend, 
"you mean water; when I say I'eaii I mean water; 
water — I'caii, lean — zvatcr ; do you not see ? We mean 
the same thing ; it is the same language." 

However this may be, nothing is clearer than that 
Zola's conception of an experiment is what I have 
described it — namely, an evolving from the inner 
consciousness of what the author //'/;//'.? the experimental 
subjects would do under given circumstances. Here are 
some of Zola's own words : and surely nothing more 
naive was ever uttered : " The writer " (of the novel) 
" employs both observation and experiment. The 

observer gives the facts as he has observed them 

and establishes the solid ground on which his characters 
shall march, and the phenomena shall develop them- 
selves. Then the experimenter appears and conducts the 
experiment', that is to say" (I am quoting from M. Zola) 
" he moves the characters in a particular story to show that the 
sequence of facts zvill be such as is determined in the study 
of phenomena.'" That is to say, to carry Zola's " experi- 
ment " into chemistry : knowing something of chlorine 
and something of hydrogen separately, a chemist who 
wishes to know their behavior under each other's 
influence may "experiment" upon that behavior by giving 
his opinion as to what chlorine and hydrogen would 
likely do under given circumstances. 



68 The English Novel 



<i)' 



It seems incredible, but it is logically beyond question, 
that by this short process we have got to the bottom of 
this whole elaborate system of the Experimental Novel, 
and have found that it is nothing but a repetition of the 
old, old trick of the hand of Jacob and the voice of Esau. 
Think how much self-sacrifice and labor, of how many 
noble and brave spirits, from Horrox and Hooke 
in the seventeenth century down to the hundreds of 
scientific men who at this moment are living obscure and 
laborious lives in the search of truth, — think, I say, how 
much fervent and pious labor has gone to invest the 
mere name of scientific experiment with that sacredness 
under which the Zola school is now claiming the rights 
and privileges of science, for what we have seen is 7iot 
science, and what, we might easily see if it were worth 
showing, is mere corruption. The hand is the hand of 
science ; but the voice is the voice of a beast. 

To many this animal voice has seemed a portentous 
sound. But if we think what kind of beast it is, we 
cease to fear. George Eliot, somewhere in Adam Bede, 
has a mot: when a donkey sets out to sing, everybody 
knows beforehand what the tune will be. This voice has 
been heard many times before. Long before Zola came 
on the stage, I find Schiller crying in his sweet silver 
tones to some who were likewise misusing both art and 
science : " Unhappy mortal, that, with science and art, 
the noblest of all instruments, effectest and attemptest 
nothing more than the day-drudge with the meanest ; that 
in the domain of perfect Freedom bearest about in thee 
the spirit of a slave." 

In these words, Schiller has at once prophesied and 
punished The Experimental Romance. 

But there is another view of Zola's claims which leads 
us into some thoughts particularly instructive at tne 



And the Principle of its Development. 69 

present time, and which will carry us very directly to 
the more special studies which will engage our attention. 

After the views of form which have been presented to 
you, it will not be necessary for me to argue that even if 
Zola's Experimental Novel were a physical possibility, 
it would be an artistic absurdity. If you could make a 
scientific record of actual experiment in human passion, 
very well : but why should we call that record a novel, 
if we do not call Professor Huxley's late work on the 
crayfish a novel, or if we do not call any physician's re- 
port of some specially interesting clinical experience to 
the Medical and Surgical Journal a novel ? 

Here we are put upon securing for ourselves perfectly 
clear conceptions as to certain relations between that so- 
called poetic activity and scientific activity of the human 
mind which find themselves in a singularly interesting 
contact in the true and worthy novel which we are going 
to study. Merely reminding you of the distinction with 
which every one is more or less familiar theoretically, that 
that activity which we variously call " poetic," " imagina- 
tive," or " creative," is essentially synthetic, is a process 
of putting together, while the scientific process seems 
distinctively analytic, or a tearing apart ; let us pass 
from this idea to those applications of the poetic faculty 
which are made whenever a scientific searcher goes 
further than the mere collection of facts, to classify them 
and to effect generalizations. This is an activity of what 
is well called the scientific imagination. Now what is 
the difference between a work of the scientific imagination 
and a work of the poetic imagination ? Without going 
into subtleties, I think the shortest way to gain a per- 
fectly clear working idea of this difference is to confine 
our attention to the differing results of these activities : 
the scientific imagination results in a formula, whose 



7o The English Novel 

paramount purpose is to be as sliort and as comprehen- 
sive as possible ; the poetic imagination results in a 
created form of forms, whose paramount purpose is to 
be as beautiful and as comprehensive as possible. For 
example, the well-known formula of evolution : that 
evolution is a process from the uniform and indefinite to 
the multiform and definite ; that is a result of long efforts 
of the scientific imagination; while on the other hand 
Tennyson's In Menwriain, in which we have deep mat- 
ters discussed in the most beautiful words and the most 
musical forms of verse, is a poetic work. 

And now if we pass one step farther and consider 
what would happen if the true scientific activity and the 
true poetic activity should engage themselves upon one 
and the same set of facts, we arrive at the novel. 

The great modern novelist is at once scientific and 
poetic : and here, it seems to me, in the novel, we have 
the meeting, the reconciliation, the kiss, of science and 
poetry. For example : George Eliot, having with those 
keen eyes of hers collected and analyzed and sorted 
many facts of British life, binds them together into a true 
poetic synthesis, in, for instance. Daniel Deronda, when 
instead of giving us the ultimate relations of all her facts 
in the shape of a formula, like that of evolution, she 
gives them to us in the beautiful creation of Gwendolen 
Harleth and all the other striking forms which move 
through the book as embodiments in flesh and blood of 
the scientific relations between all her facts. 

Perhaps we will find it convenient here, too, to base 
perfectly clear ideas of the three existing schools of 
novel-writing upon these foregoing principles. It has 
been common for some time to hear of the Romantic and 
the Realistic school, and lately a third term has been 
brought into use by the Zola section who call themselves 



And the Principle of its Development. 7 1 

the Naturalistic school. It is easy to see that these terms 
have arisen from the greater or less prominence given 
now to the poetic activity, now to the scientific activity, 
in novel writing; those who most rely on the poetic being 
the Romantic, those on a combination of the poetic and 
scientific the Realistic, and those who entirely reject the 
imagination (as Zola professes to do) the Naturalistic 
school. At all events, then, not troubling ourselves 
with the Naturalists who, as we have seen, call that an 
experiment which is only an imaginative product ; we 
are prepared to study the Novel as a work in which 
science is carried over into the region of art. We are not 
to regard the novel therefore as ought else but a work of 
art, and the novelist as an artist. 

One rejoices to find Emerson discussing the novel in 
this light purely, in his very suggestive essay on 
" Books " :— 

" Whilst the prudential and economical tone of society 
starves the imagination, affronted Nature gets such in- 
demnity as she may. The novel is that allowance and 
frolic the imagination finds. Everything else pins it 
down, and men flee for redress to Byron, Scott, Disraeli, 
Dumas, Sand, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray and Reade. 

"The imagination infuses a certain volatility and intoxi- 
cation. It has a flute which sets the atoms of our frame 
in a dance, like planets; and, once so liberated, the whole 
man reeling drunk to the music, they never quite subside 
to their old stony state." 

Nay, we have such beautiful novels in the world, 
novels far from the experimental romances by which we 
are not perfected but infected {iton perficitur, inficitiu'), as 
old Burton quotes in the Anatomy ; novels in which 
scientific harmony has passed into its heavenly after life 
of wisdom, novels in which the pure sense of poetic 



72 The English Novel 

beauty is so tenderly drawn out, that I love to think of 
them in the terms which our most beauty-loving of 
modern poets has applied to beauty, in the opening of 
Endj'viion : 

A thing of beauty is a joy forever ; 

Its loveliness increases ; it will never 

Pass into nothingness, but still will keep 

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing; 

Therefore on every morrow, are we wreathing 

A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, 

Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways 

Made for our searching : yes, in spite of all, 

Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, 

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon 

For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils 

With the green world they live in ; and clear rills 

That for themselves a cooling covert make 

'Gainst the hot season ; the mid-forest brake. 

Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms ; 

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 

We have imagined for the mighty dead ; 

All lovely tales that we have heard or read : 

An endless fountain of immortal drink, 

Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. 



And the Principle of its Development. ^2) 



IV. 



The points discussed at our last meeting were mainly 
of such a nature that I need not occupy your time with 
the detailed review which has seemed advisable here- 
tofore. 

You will remember, in a general way, that we finished 
examining the claims of the poetry of the future, as 
presented by Whitman, and found reason to believe, 
from several trains of argument, that its alleged demo- 
cratic spirit was based on a political misconception ; that 
its religious spirit was no more than that general feeling 
of good fellowship and cameraderie which every man 
of the world knows to be the commonest of virtues 
among certain classes ; its strength rested upon purely 
physical qualifications which have long ago practically 
ceased to be strength ; its contempt for dandyism was 
itself only a cruder dandyism, and its proposed substi- 
tution of power for beauty not only an artistic blindness 
but a historical error as to the general progress of this 
world, which has been/r<?w strength to beauty ever since 
the ponderous old gods Oceanus and Gaea — representa- 
tives of rude strength — gave way to the more orderly 
(that is, more beautiful) reign of Saturn, and he in turn 
to the still more orderly and beauty-representing Jupiter, 
whom Chaucer has called the " fadyr of delicacye." 

Passing thus from the Whitman school, we attacked 

that third misconception of literary form which had 

taken the shape of the so-called naturalistic school, as 

led by Zola in his novels and defended by him in his 

4 



74 The English Novel 

recent work, The Experimental Romance. Here we 
quickly discovered that if the term "experiment" were 
used by this school in its ordinary and scientific sense, it 
would, in a large number of cases, involve conditions 
which would exterminate the authors of the projected 
experimental romances often at an early stage of the 
plot ; but that secondly, this inconvenience was avoided 
through the very peculiar meaning which was attached 
to the word by this school, and which reveals that they 
make no more use of experiment, in point of fact, than 
any one of the numerous novelists who have for years 
been in the habit of studying real life and nature as the 
basis of their work. 

In short, it appeared that to support the propriety of 
circulating such books by calling them experimental 
romances, was as if a man should sell profitable poison 
under the name of scientific milk, and claim therefor 
both the gratitude of society and the privileges of science. 
Finally, supplying ourselves with clear ideas as to the 
difference between what has become so well known in 
modern times as the scientific imagination and the poetic 
imagination, we determined to regard the novel as a true 
work of art, and the novelist as an artist, by reason of 
the created forms in the novel which were shown to be 
the distinctive outcome of the poetical imagination as 
opposed to the formula which is the distinctive outcome 
of the scientific imagination. Nevertheless, in vifew of 
the circumstance that the facts embodied in these forms 
are facts which must have been collected by a genuine 
exercise of the true scientific faculty of observing and 
classifying, we were compelled to regard the novel as a 
joint product of science and art, ranking as art by virtue 
of its final purely artistic'outcome in the shape of beau- 
tiful created forms. 



And the Principle of its Developtnent. 75 

It is with a sense of relief that one turns away from 
what I fear has seemed the personal and truculent 
tone of the last lecture — an appearance almost insepara- 
ble from the fact that certain schools of writing have 
become represented by the names of their living founders, 
and which would, indeed, have prevented your present 
lecturer from engaging in the discussion had not his 
reluctance been overwhelmed by the sacred duty of 
protesting against all this forcible occupation of the 
temple of art by those who have come certainly not for 
worship; it is with a sense of relief that one turns from 
this to pursue the more gracious and general studies 
which will now occupy us. 

According to the plan already sketched : having 
now acquired some clear fundamental conceptions of the 
correlations among form, science, art, and the like notions 
often so vaguely used, we are next to inquire, as our first 
main line of research : Is it really true that what was 
explained as the growth in human personality is the con- 
tinuing single principle of human progress; is it really 
true that the difference between the time of ^schylus 
and the time of (say) George Eliot is the difference in the 
strength with which the average man feels the scope and 
sovereignty of his age ? For upon this fundamental 
point necessarily depends our final proposition that the 
modern novel is itself the expression of this intensified 
personality and an expression which could only be made 
by greatly extending the form of the Greek drama. 
Pursuing our custom of leaving the abstract and plung- 
ing into the concrete as soon as possible, let us determine 
this question by endeavoring to find some special notable 
works of antique and of modern times in which substan- 
tially the same subject matter has been treated ; let us 
then compare the difference in treatment, let us summar- 



76 The English Novel 

ize the picture of things evidently existing in the old, as 
contrasted with the modern author's and reader's minds; 
and finally let us see whether the differences thus emerg- 
ing will not force themselves upon us as differences grow- 
ing out of personality. For the purposes of this com- 
parison I have thought that the PrometJieus Bound of 
-^schylus, the PromctJieiis Unbound oi Shelley, and the 
Prince Deukalion of Bayard Taylor offered inviting 
resources as works which treat substantially the same 
story, although the first was written some two thousand 
three hundred years before the last two. Permit me 
then, in beginning this comparison, to set before you 
these three works in the broadest possible sketch by 
reading from each, here and there a line such as may 
bring the action freshly before you and at the same time 
elucidate specially the differences in treatment we are in 
scarce of As I now run rapidly through the Prometheus 
of ^schylus, I ask you to bear along in mind the precise 
nature of this spontaneous variation between man and man 
which I was at some pains to define in my first lecture ; 
and perhaps I may extend profitably the partial idea there 
given by adopting a pretty fancy which I find in No. 44 
of Tennyson's /;/ Memoriam, and carrying it to a larger 
sphere than there intended. The poet is here expressing 
the conception that perhaps the main use of this present 
life of ours is for each one to learn himself, — possibly as 
preparatory to learning other things hereafter. He says : 

The baby new to earth and sky 

What time his tender palm is prest" 

Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that ' this is I : ' 

But as he grows he gathers much, 

And learns the use of ' I ' and ' me, ' 

And finds, 'I am not what I see, 
And other than the things I touch. ' 



And the Principle of its Development. "jy 

So rounds he to a separate mind 

From whence clear memory may begin, 
As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined. 

This use may lie in blood and breath, 

Which else were fruitless of their due, 
Had man to learn himself anew 

Beyond the second birth of Death. 

Now if we extend the process of growth here described 
as of a single child passing through a single life to the 
collective process of growth effected by humanity from 
age to age, we have quite clearly the principle whose 
light I wish to shed upon our comparison of the Avorks 
I have named. Just as the child learns to know himself 
— " that I am I " — so man comes in the course of time to 
feel more and more distinctly I am I ; and the growth 
of this feeling continually uproots his old relations to 
things and brings about new relations with new forms to 
clothe them in. 

One may say indeed that this recognition of the su- 
preme finality of the ego feeling among modern men 
seems a curious and not unrelated counterpart of the 
theory by which the modern physicist, in order to ex- 
plain his physical world, divides it into atoms which 
atoms are themselves indivisible. We have here the 
perplexing problem which in the poem De Profiindis, 
partially read to you, was poetically called "the pain of 
this divisible, indivisible world." To explain the world, 
whether the moral or the physical world, we must 
suppose it divisible into atoms ; to explain the atom, we 
must suppose that indivisible. Let us see then in what 
form this " pain of the divisible, indivisible world" with 
all its attendant pains of contradiction between fate and 
free will, — between the Infinite Personality, which should 



78 TJie English Novel 

seem boundless, and the finite personality which never- 
theless seems to bound it, — let us see, I say under what 
explicit forms this pain appears in the Prometheus Bound, 
for alas it was an old grief when ^Eschylus was a baby. 
Here, then, in the centre of the stage lies the gigantic 
figure of Prometheus, (let us fancy) stark, prostrate, 
proud, unmoving throughout the whole action. Two 
ministers of Jove, Might and Force, have him in charge 
and Hephaestus — the god more commonly known as 
Vulcan — stands by with chain, hammer and bolt. Might 
acquaints us at once with what is toward. 

At length the utmost bound of earth we've reached, 
This Scythian soil, this wild untrodden waste. 
Hephicstus, now Jove's high behests demand 
Thy care ; to these steep, cliffy rocks bind down 
With close-linked chains of during adamant 
This daring wretch. For he the bright rayed fire, 
Mother of arts ....... 

Filched from the gods and gave to mortals. Here 

Let his pride learn to bow to Jove supreme ; 
And love men well but love them not too much. 

Hephaestus proceeds to chain him, but with many pro- 
tests, not only because Prometheus' act seems over- 
punished, but because he is Prometheus' kinsman. 

Would that some other hand 

(He cries) 

"Had drawn the lot 
To do this deed! " 

To which Might replies 

All things may be, but this : 

To dictate to the gods. There's one that's free, 

One only — Jove. 



Ajid the Principle of its Development. 'jg 

And Hephaestus sullenly acquiesces, as he beats away 
at his task, 

" I know it, and am dumb." 

— Amid similar talk — of protest from Vulcan and piti- 
less menace from Might — the great blacksmith proceeds 
to force an adamantine bolt through the breast of Pro- 
metheus, then to nail his feet to the rock, and so at last 
cries, in relief. 

Let us away, He's fettered, limb and thaw. 

But Might must have his last pitiless speech. 

" There lie, 

he exults, — 

And feed thy pride on this bare rock. 
Filching god's gifts for mortal men. What man 
Shall free thee from these woes ? Thou hast been called 
In vain the Provident : 

{^pro-vident, same as pro-metheus, he who looks ahead, 
who provides, the provident.) 

had thy soul possessed 
The virtue of thy name, thou had'st foreseen 
These cunning toils, and had'st unwound thee from them. 

Here all depart but Prometheus. Up to this time the 
Titan has maintained a proud silence. He now breaks 
into that large invocation which seems still to assault our 
physical ears across the twenty odd centuries. 

divine yEther, and swift-winged Winds, 
And Fountains of the rivers and multitudinous 
Laughter of ocean, and thou Earth, 

Born mother of us all, and thou bright round 
Of the all-seeing Sun, you I invoke ! 
Behold what ignominy of causeless wrongs 

1 suffer from the gods, myself a god ! 



8o The English Novel 

(This, by the way, is one of those passages which our 
elder poets seem to have regarded as somehow lying 
outside the pale of moral law — like umbrellas — and 
which they have therefore appropriated without a thought 
of blushing. Byron, in Manfred, and Shelley, in his 
Prometheus Unbound, have quite fairly translated parts 
of it.) 

Enter now a chorus of Oceanides, and these continue 
throughout the play to perform the functions of exciting 
sympathy for the Protagonist, and of calling upon him 
for information when it becomes necessary that the 
"audience should know this and that fact essential to the 
intelligibility of the action. 

For example, after the Oceanides have alighted from 
their wind-borne car, and have condoled with the 
sufferer, ^schylus makes them the medium of drawing 
from Prometheus the recital of his wrongs, and thus of 
freshly placing that whole tremendous story before the 
minds of his audience. 

Speak now, 

say the chorus, 

"And let us know the whole offence 
Jove charges thee withal." 

And Prometheus relates 

When first the gods their fatal strife began, 

And insurrection raged in heaven, some striving 

To cast old Kronos from his heavy throne 

That Jove might reign, and others to crush i' the bud 

His swelling mastery — I wise counsel gave 

To the Titans, sons of primal Heaven and Earth; 

But gave in vain. 

Thus baffled in my plans, I deemed it best, 

As things then were, leagued with my mother Themis, 



A?id the Principle of its Development. 8 : 

To accept Jove's proffered friendship. By my counsels. 
From his primeval throne was Kronos hurled 
Into the pit Tartarean, dark, profound, 
With all his troop of friends. 

Soon as he sat on his ancestral throne 

He called the gods together, and assigned 

To each his fair allotment and his sphere 

Of sway ; but, ah ! for wretched man ! 

To him no portion fell : Jove vowed 

To blot his memory from the Earth, and mould 

The race anew. I only of the gods 

Thwarted his will; and, but for my strong aid, 

Hades had whelmed, and hopeless ruin swamped 

All men that breathe. Such were my crimes : 



And here I lie, in cunning torment stretched, 
A spectacle inglorious to Jove, 

Presently Ocean appears, and advises Prometheus to 
yield. Promethus scornfully refuses, and Ocean, fearful 
of being found in bad company, prudently retires, 
whereupon, after a mournful hymn from the chorus, 
reciting ' the sympathy of all nations and things with 
Prometheus, he proceeds to relate in detail his ministry 
in behalf of mankind. The account which he gives of 
the primal condition of the human race is very instruc- 
tive upon our present research, as embodying, or rather 
as unconsciously revealing; the complete unconsciousness 
of personality — of what we call personality — among 
yEschylus and his contemporaries. 

Prometheus begins by calling the whole human race 
at that time a babe, and goes on to declare that 

Having eyes to see, they saw not, 
And hearing, heard not, but, like dreaming phantoms, 
A random life they led from year to year, 
4* 



82 The English Novel 

AH blindly floundering on. No craft they knew 

— to build — 
But in the dark earth burrowed. .... 
Numbers too I taught them. . . . and how 
To fix their shifting thoughts by marshalled signs. 

He brings the ox, the ass, and the horse into service, 
launches the first boat on the sea, teaches medicine, 
institutes divination, and finally 

I probed the earth 

To yield its hidden wealth . . ... 

Iron, copper, silver, gold ; . . . . . . 

And thus, with one short word to sum the tale, 
Prometheus taught all arts to mortal men. 

CHORUS. 
Do good to men, but do it with discretion. 
Why shouldst thou harm thyself ? Good hope I nurse 
To see thee soon from these harsh chains unbound, 
As free, as mighty, as great Jove himself. 

PROMETHEUS. 

This may not be ; the destined curse of things 

Fate must accomplish 

Though art be strong, necessity is stronger. 

CHORUS. 

And who is lord of strong necessity ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

The triform Fates and the sure-memoried Furies. 

CHORUS. 

And mighty Jove himself must yield to them ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

No more than others Jove can 'scape his doom. 

CHORUS. 

***-x **** 

There's some dread mystery in thy speech 
Close-veiled. 



And the Principle of its Development. 83 

PROMETHEUS. 

* * * * The truth thou'lt know 
In fitting season ; now it hes concealed 
In deepest darkness ; for relenting Jove 
Himself must woo this secret from my breast. 

(This secret — so it is told in the old myths — is that 
Jove is to meet his own downfall through an unfortunate 
marriage, and Prometheus is in possession of the details 
which would enable Jove to avoid the doom.) 

After a choral hymn, recommending submission to 
Jove, we have suddenly the grotesque apparition of lo 
upon the stage. lo had been beloved by Jove ; but the 
jealousy of Hera, or Juno, had transformed her into a 
cow, and had doomed her to wander over the world 
stung by an inexpugnable gadfly, and watched by the 
hundred-eyed Argus. Thus, suddenly, upon the specta- 
cle of a man suffering from the hatred of Jove, .^schylus 
brings the spectacle of a woman suffering from the love 
of Jove. lo enters with this fine outburst: 

What land is this ? What race of mortals 

Owns this desert ? Who art thou. 

Rock-bound with these wintry fetters, 

And for what crime tortured thus ? 

Worn and weary with far travel, 

Tell me where my feet have borne me ! 

O pain ! pain ! pain ! it stings and goads me again, 

The fateful gadfly ! — save me, O Earth ! — avaunt, 

Thou horrible shadow of the earth-born Argus ! 

Could not the grave close up thy hundred eyes, 

But thou must come, 

Haunting my path with thy suspicious look, 

Unhoused from Hades ? 

Avaunt ! avaunt ! why wilt thou hound my track, 

'^he famished wanderer on the waste sea-shore ? 

After much talk, lo now relates her mournful story, 
and, supported by the Chorus, persuades Prometheus to 



84 The English Novel 

prophesy the very eventful future which awaits her when 
her wanderings are over. In this prophetic account of 
her travels, yEschylus gives a soul-expanding review of 
land after land according to the geographic and ethnic 
notions of his time ; and here Mr. Blackie, whose trans- 
lation of the Prometheus I have been partly quoting 
from, sometimes reproduces his author in very large and 
musical measures. For example, Prometheus chants : 

When thou hast crossed the narrow stream that parts 
The continents, to the far flame-faced East 
Thou shalt proceed, the highway of the sun ; 
Then cross the sounding ocean, till thou reach 
Cisthene and the Gorgon plains, where dwell 
Phorcys' three daughters, maids with frosty eld, 
White as the swan, with one eye and one tooth 
Shared by the three ; them Phoebus, beamy-bright 
Beholds not, nor the nightly moon. Near them 
Their winged sisters dwell, the Gorgons dire, 
Man-hating monsters, snaky-locked, whom eye 
Of mortal ne'er might look upon and live. 
* * * * One more sight remains 
That fills the eye with horror. * * * 
The sharp-beaked Griffins, hounds of Jove, avoid, 
Fell dogs that bark not ; and the one-eyed host 
Of Arimaspian horsemen with swift hoofs 
Beating the banks of golden-rolling Pluto. 
A distant land, a swarthy people next 
Receives thee : near the fountains of the sun 
They dwell by Ethiop's wave. This river trace 
Until thy weary feet shall reach the pass 
Whence from the Bybline heights the sacred Nile 
Pours his salubrious flood. The winding wave 
Thence to triangled Egypt guides thee, where 
A distant home awaits thee, fated mother 
Of an unstoried race. 

In this strain Prometheus continues to foretell the 
adventures of lo until her son Epaphus, monarch of 



Ajid the Principle of its Developmoit. 85 

Egypt, is born, who will be — through the fifty daughters 
celebrated in The Suppliants of ^Eschylus — the ancestor 
of Hercules, which Hercules is to be the deliverer of 
Prometheus himself. 

Then in a frenzy of pain^ lo departs, while the Chorus 
bursts into a hymn deploring such ill-matched unions as 
that of lo with Jove, and extolling marriage between 
equals. 

After the exit of lo — to finish our summary of the 
play — the action hastens to the end ; the chorus implores 
Prometheus to submit : presently, Hermes or Mercury 
appears, and tauntingly counsels surrender, only to be as 
tauntingly repulsed by Prometheus ; and, after a sharp 
passage of wits between these two, accompanied by in- 
dignant outbursts from the Chorus at the pitilessness of 
Hermes, the play ceases with a speech from Prometheus 
describing the new punishment of Jove : 

Now in deed and not in discourse, 

The firm earth quakes. 

Deep and loud the ambient thunder 

Bellows, and the flaring lightning 

Wreathes his fiery curls around me 

And the whirlwind rolls his dust, 

And the winds from rival regions 

Rush in elemental strife. 

And the sky is destroyed with the sea. 

Surely now the tyrant gathers 

All his hoarded wrath to whelm me. 

Mighty Mother, worshipped Themis, 

Circling yEther that diffusest 

Light, the common joy of all, 

Thou beholdest these my wrongs ! 

Thus in the crash of elements the play ends. Fortu- 
nately our purpose with this huge old story thus treated 
by iEschylus, lays us under no necessity to involve our- 



86 TJic Enoiish Novel 



i> 



selves in endless discussions of the Sun-myths, of the 
connection between ox-horned lo and the sacred Egyp- 
tian cow Isis ; of moral interpretations which vary with 
ever}' standpoint. The extent to which these do vary is 
amusingly illustrated in an interpretation of the true sig- 
nificance of Prometheus, which I recently happened to 
light upon, made by a certain Mr. Newton, who pub- 
lished an elaborate work a few years ago in defence of 
the strictly vegetable diet. Mr. Newton would not have 
us misapply fire to cookery ; and in this line of thought 
he interprets the old fable that Prometheus stole fire from 
heaven and was punished by being chained to Caucasus 
with a vulture to gnaw his liver. The simple fact, says 
our vegetarian, is that " Prometheus first taught the use 
of animal food, and of fire with which to render it more 
pleasing, etc., to the taste. Jupiter, and the rest of the 
gods, foreseeing the consequences of the inventions " 
(these consequences being all manner of gastric and other 
diseases which Newton attributes to the use of animal 
food), "were amused or irritated at the short-sighted de- 
vices of the . . . creature, and left him to experience the 
sad effects of them." In short, the chaining to a rock, 
with a vulture to gnaw his liver, is simply a very satisfac- 
tory symbol for dyspepsia. 

Untroubled by these entanglements, which thus reach 
from Max Miiller, with his Sun-wanderings, to the dys- 
peptic theory of our vegetarian ; our present concern is 
less with what ^schylus or his fable meant than with 
the frame of mind of the average man who sat in his 
audience, and who listened to these matters with favor, 
who accepted this picture of gods and men without re- 
bellion. My argument is, that if this average man's 
sense of personality had not been most feeble he could 
not have accepted this picture at all. Permit me, then, 



And the Principle of its Development. 87 

to specify three or four of the larger features of it before 
we go on to contrast the treatment of this fable by N.s- 
chylus with that by Shelley and Taylor in a later age. 

In the first place, then, since we are mainly meditating 
upon the growth of human personality, I beg you to ob- 
serve the complete lack of all provision for such growth, 
either among the gods or the men of this presentation. 
Consider Hephaestus, for example, or Vulcan. Vulcan 
may hammer away, immortal as he is, for a million aeons 
upon the thunderbolts of Jove ; he may fashion and forge 
until he has exhausted the whole science and art of 
offensive and defensive armament ; but how much better 
off is Vulcan for that ? he can never step upon a higher 
plane, — he is to all eternity simply Vulcan, armorer to 
Jove. And so Hermes or Mercury may carry messages 
eternally, but no more ; his faculty and apparatus go to 
that end and no farther. But these limitations are intol- 
erable to the modern personality. The very conception 
of personality seems to me to imply a conception of 
growth. If I do one thing to-day, another to-morrow, I 
am twice as much to-morrow as I was to-day, by virtue 
of the new thing ; or, even if I do only the same thing 
to-morrow that I did to-day, I do it easier, — that is, with 
a less expenditure of force, which leaves me a little sur- 
plus ; and by as much as this surplus (which I can apply 
to something else), I am more than I was yesterday. 
This " more " represents the growth which I said was 
implied in the very conception of personality, of the con- 
tinuous individual. 

Now the feeling of all this appears to be just as com- 
pletely asleep in yEschylus himself and in all his prece- 
dent old Greek theogonists as it is in the most witless 
boor who gazes open-mouthed at the gigantic Prometheus. 
But if we here descend from the gods, to the men, of 



88 The EnHish Novel 



ii' 



this picture, we find Prometheus almost in terms assert- 
ing this absence of personahty among the men whom 
he taught which we have just found by implication among 
the gods who tortured him. 

You will remember the lines I read from the first long 
speech of Prometheus, in which he describes the utterly 
brutish, crawling cave-dwellers to whom he communicated 
the first idea of every useful art. The denial of all power 
in man himself, once he was created, of originating these 
inventions — that is, of growing — that is, of personality — 
is complete. 

I find nothing so subtly and inconsolably mournful 
among all the explicit miseries of the Greek mythology 
as this fixity of nature in the god or the man, by which 
the being is suspended, as it were, at a certain point of 
growth, there to hang forever. And in this view the 
whole multitudinous people, divine and human, of the 
"whole Greek cyclics, seem to me as if sculptured in a 
half relief upon the black marble wall of their fate — in 
half relief because but half gods and half men, who in 
the lack of personality cannot grow, cannot move. 

When Keats stands regarding the figures sculptured 
upon the Grecian urn, it is only a cunning sign of the 
unspeakable misery of his own life that he finds the 
youth happy because though he can never succeed in 
his chase he can never fall any farther behind in it ; to 
Keats' teased aspiration a certain sense of rest comes 
out of the very fixity of a man suspended in marble. 

" Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss 
Though winning near the goal ! Yet do not grieve : 
She cannot fade though thou hast not thy bliss, 
Forever wilt thou love and she be fair." 



A7td the Principle of its Develop7neiit. 89 

A true old Greek despair fills these lines with a sorrow 
which is all the more penetrating when we hear it surg- 
ing out from among the keen and energetic personalities 
of modern times, — personalities which will not accept 
any youth's happiness of being howsoever near to his 
love if that happiness be coupled with the condition that 
he is never to be nearer, — personalities which find their 
whole summary in continuous growth, increase, move- 
ment. 

And if we remember that even when the condition of 
primal man is very far from the miserable state depicted 
by Prometheus, the case grows all the stronger of that 
Golden Age in which the antique imagination took great 
delight, not all unshared, it must be confessed, by later 
times, fails to please the modern personality. For ex- 
ample in Chaucer's poem called Adas Prima, that is, the 
first or Golden Age, we have the most engaging picture 
of man in a pre-Promethean time, drawn at a far differ- 
ent point of view from that of Prometheus in our play. 

How taking seems this simplicity : > 

" A blisful lyfe, a peseable and so swete, 
Leddyn the peplis in the former age ; 
Thei helde them paied with the frutes they ete, 
Wich that the feldes gafe them by usage ; 

Thei etyn most hawys and such pownage 
And dronken watyr of the colde welle. 

Yet was the ground not woundyd with the plough, 
But corne upsprange onsowe of mannes hand; 

No man yit knew the furous of hys land : 
No man yit fier owt of the flynt fand. 

No flesche ne wyst offence of hegge or spere ; 
No coyne ne knew man whiche was false or trewe : 
No shyppe yit karfe the wawys grene and blewe : 
No marchand yit ne fet owtlandische ware. 



90 TJie English Novel 

Yit were no palys chambris, no no hallys ; 
In cavys and in wodes soft and swete 
Sleptyn thys blessyd folk withowte wallys 
On grasse or levys in parfite joy and quiete. 

Unforgyd was the hauberke and the plate ; 

The lambisshe pepyl, voyd of alle vice, 

Hadden noo fantasye to debate, 

But eche of hem wold oder well cheriche: 

No pride, none envy, none avarice. 

No lord, no taylage by no tyrannye, 

Humblesse, and pease, good fayth the emprise. 

Yit was not Jupiter the likerous, 

That first was fadyr of delicacye 

Come in thys world, ne Nembroth desirous 

To raygne hadde not made hys towrys hyghe. 

Alas ! alas ! now may men weep and crye, 

For in owre days is is not but covetyse, 

Doublenesse, treson, and envye, 

Poysonne, manslawtyr, mordre in sondri wyse." 

Surely this is all soothing and enchanting enough ; 
one cannot escape the amiable complacencies which 
breathe out from this placid scene ; but what modern 
man would soberly agree to exchange a single moment 
of this keen, breezy, energetic, growing existence of ours 
for a Methusaleh's life in this golden land where nature 
does not offer enough resistance to educe manhood or 
to furnish material for art, and where there is absolutely 
no room, no chance, no need, no conception of this per- 
sonality that if rightly felt makes the humblest life one 
long enchantment of the possible. The modern per- 
sonality confronted with these pictures, after the first 
glamour is gone, is much minded to say, with the sharp- 
witted Glaucon, in Plato's Republic, according to Jowett : 
" after all, a state of simplicity is a city of pigs." 

But secondly, the cumbrous apparatus of power with 



A7id the Principle of its Development. 9 1 

which ^'Eschylus presents us in this play is a conception 
of people not acquainted with that model of infinite 
compactness which every man finds in his own ego. 
Jove, instead of speaking a word and instantly seeing 
the deed result, must rely first upon his two ministers, 
Might and Force, who in the first scene of our play 
have hauled in the Titan Prometheus ; these, however, 
do not suffice, but Hephaestus must be summoned in 
order to nail him to the rocks ; and Jove cannot even 
learn whether or not his prisoner is repentant until 
Hermes, the messenger, visits Prometheus and returns. 
The modern ego which, though one indivisible, impalpa- 
ble unit, yet remembers, reasons, imagines, loves, hates, 
fears and does a thousand more things all within its little 
scope, without appliances or external apparatus — such 
an ego regards such a Jove much in the light of that old 
Spanish monarch in whose court various duties were so 
minutely distributed and punctiliously discharged, that 
upon a certain occasion (as is related), the monarch being 
seated too near the fire, and the proper functionary for 
removing him being out of call, his majesty was roasted 
to death in the presence of the entire royal household. 

And as the third feature of the unpersonality revealed 
in this play, consider the fact that it is impossible for the 
modern reader to find himself at all properly terror- 
stricken by the purely physical paraphernalia of thunder, 
of storms, of chains, of sharp bolts, and the like, which 
constitute the whole resources of Jove for the punish- 
ment of Prometheus. 

The modern direct way of looking at things — the per- 
fectly natural outcome of habit of every man's dealing 
with a thing for himself and of first necessarily looking 
to see what the thing actually is — this directness of 
vision cannot help seeing that Prometheus is a god, that 



92 The Eitglish Novel 

he is immortal, that thunder cannot kill him, that the 
bolt through his breast makes no wound, but will repair 
itself with ease, that he not only knows all this, but 
knows further that it is to end (as Prometheus himself 
declares in the play), in his own triumph. Under these 
circumstances the whole array of whirlwinds and light- 
nings become a mere pin-scratch; the whole business is 
a matter of that purely physical pain which every man 
is ashamed to make a noise of. We can conceive a 
mere man fronting all these terrors of storm and thunder 
with unbowed head and serene countenance, in the con- 
sciousness that the whitest of these lightnings cannot 
singe an eyelash of his immortal personality ; how, then, 
can it be expected that we shall be greatly impressed with 
the endurance of these ills by a god to whose greater 
resistive endowment the whole system of this gross thrust- 
and-smite of iron and fire is no more than the momentary 
tease of a gnat ! To the audience of ^Eschylus, not 
so ; they shiver and groan ; they know not themselves. 

I do not know how I can better show the grossness of 
this conception of pain than by opposing to it a subtile 
modern conception thereof whose contrast will fairly 
open out before us the truly prodigious gulf between 
the average personality of the time of ^schylus and 
that of ourselves. The modern conception, I refer to is 
Keats' Ode on Melancholy ; which, indeed, if one may 
say a word obiter, out of the fullness of one's heart — I 
am often inclined to think for all-in-all, that is, for 
thoughts most mortally compacted, for words which 
come forth, each trembling and giving off light like a 
morning-star, and for the pure beauty of the spirit and 
strength and height of the spirit, — which, I say, for 
all-in-all, I am often inclined to think, reaches the highest 
height yet touched in the lyric line. 



And the Principle of its Development, 93 

ODE ON MELANCHOLY. 

No, no, go not to Leihe, neither twist 

Wolf s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine ; 

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd 
By night-shade, ruby grape of Proserpine ; 

Make not your rosary of yew-berries, 
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be 
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl 

A partner in your sorrow's mysteries ; 

For shade to shade will come too drowsily, 
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 

But when the melancholy fit shall fall 

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, 

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, 
And hides the green hill in an April shroud. 

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, 
Or on the rainbow of the salt-sand wave, 
Or in the wealth of globed peonies ; 

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows. 
Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave. 
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. 

She dwells with Beauty — Beauty that must die ; 

And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
Bidding adieu ; and aching Pleasure nigh. 

Turning to poison while tht bee-moth sips : 
Ay, in the very temple of Delight 

Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine. 
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue 

Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ; 
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, 

And be among her cloudy trophies hung. 



94 The English Novel 



V. 



The main direction of our studies has been indicated 
in the preceding lectures to such an extent that from 
this point forward our customary review may be omitted. 
In examing the Prometheus of ^schylus we have found 
three particulars, in which not only yEschylus, but his 
entire contemporary time shows complete unconscious- 
ness of the most precious and essential belongings of 
personality. These particulars were, (i), the absolute 
impossibility of growth, implicitly affirmed of the gods 
and explicitly affirmed of men in the passages which 
were read ; (2) the awkwardness of Jove's apparatus of 
power which included a minister for every kind of act — 
as contrasted with the elasticity and much-in-little which 
each man must perceive in regarding the action of his 
own mind ; and (3) the gross and purely physical char- 
acter of the punishments used by Jove to break the 
spirit of Prometheus. It was contended, you remember, 
that if the audience of vEschylus had acquired that 
direct way of looking phenomena in the face, which is 
one of the incidents of our modern personality, they 
would have perceived such an inadequacy between the 
thunders and earthquakes of Jove, on the one hand, and 
the immortal spirit of a Titan and a god like Prome- 
theus, on the other, that the play, instead of being a 
religious and impressive spectacle to them, as it doubt- 
less was, would have been simply a matter of ridicule, 
or at best one of those mere dilettante entertainments 
where of our own free will we forgive the grossest 



Arid the Principle of its Development. 95 

violations of common sense and propriety for the sake 
of the music or the scenery with which they are asso- 
ciated, as for example at the Italian opera, or the Christ- 
mas pantomime. 

This last particular brings us directly upon Shelley's 
play of the Prometheus Unbound. 

We have seen that /Eschylus had a fit audience for 
this fable, and was working upon emotions which are as 
deep as religion ; but now, when we come down 2300 
years to a time from which the yEschylean religious 
beliefs have long exhaled, and when the enormous 
growth of personality has quite rolled away the old 
lumpish terror that stood before the cave of the physical 
and darkened it, in such a time it would, of course, be 
truly amazing if a man like Shelley should have elabo- 
rated this same old Prometheus fable into a lyrical drama 
in the expectation of shaking the souls of men with this 
same old machinery of thunder, whirlwind and earth- 
quake. 

Such a mistake — the mistake of tearing the old fable 
forcibly away from its old surroundings, and of setting 
it in modern thoughts before modern men, would be 
much the same with that which Emerson has noted in 
his poem Each and All : 

" I thought of the sparrow's note from heaven, 
Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; 
I brought him home in his nest at even ; 
He sings the song, but it pleases not now, 
For I did not bring home the river and sky — 
He sang to my ear, they sang to my eye. 
The delicate shells lay on the shore ; 
Bubbles of the latest wave 
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave ; 
And the bellowing of the savage sea 
Greeted their safe escape to me. 



96 The English Novel 

I wiped away the weeds and foam 

I fetched my sea-born treasures home ; 

But the poor, unsightly, noisome things 

Had left their beauty on the shore 

With the sun and the sand and the wild sea-shore." 

Accordingly, it is instructive, as we look into Shelley's 
work, to observe how this inability of his to bring home 
the river and the sky along with the sparrow — this 
inability to bring a Greek-hearted audience to listen to 
his Greek fable — operated to infuse a certain tang of 
insincerity, of dilettantism, whenever he attempts to re- 
produce upon us the old terrors of thunder and lightning 
which ^schylus found so effective. We — we moderns 
— cannot for our lives help seeing the man in his shirt- 
sleeves who is turning the crank of the thunder-mill 
behind the scenes ; nay, we are inclined to ask with a 
certain proud indignation. How is it that you wish us to 
tremble at this mere resinous lightning, when we have 
seen a man (not a Titan nor a god), one of ourselves go 
forth into a thunder-storm and send his kite up into the 
very bosom thereof, and fairly entice the lightning by 
his wit to come and perch upon his finger, and be the 
tame bird of him and his fellows thereafter and forever? 
But, secondly, it is still more conclusive upon our present 
point, of the different demands made by the personality 
of our time from that of ^Eschylus, to observe how 
Shelley's own sense of this difference, his own modern 
instinct, has led him to make most material alterations 
of the old fable, not only increasing the old list of 
physical torments with a number that are purely spiritual 
and modern, but also by dignifying at once the character 
of Prometheus and the catastrophe of the play with 
that enormous motive of forgiveness which seems to be 
the largest outcome of the developed personality. Many 



Aitd the Principle of its Development. 97 

of you are aware of the scholastic belief that the 
PromctJicus Bound of yEschylus was but the middle play 
of a trilogy, and that the last showed us a compromise 
effected between Prometheus and Jove, according to 
which Prometheus reveals the fatal secret concerning 
Jove's marriage, and Jove makes a new league of amity 
with the Titan. We have a note of this change in 
treatment in the very opening lines of Shelley's play — 
which I now beg to set before you in the briefest possible 
sketch. Scene I. of Act I. opens according to the stage 
direction — upon A ravine of icy rocks in the Indian 
Caucasus : Projnetheus is discovered boiind to the precipice : 
Panthea and lone are seated at his feet: time, night: 
during the scene, morning slowly breaks. Prometheus 
begins to speak at once. I read only, here and there a 
line selected with special reference to showing the change 
of treatment I have indicated as due to that intenser 
instinct of personality which Shelley shared in common 
with his contemporaries over iEschylus and his contem- 
poraries. 

Prometheus exclaims : 

" Monarch of gods and demons, and all spirits 
But one, who throng those bright and rolHng worlds 
Which thou and I alone of hving things 

Behold with sleepless eyes ! 

Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours, 
And moments aye divided by keen pangs 
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude, 
Scorn and despair, — these are mine empire, 
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest 
From thine unenvied throne ! " 

Here we have the purely spiritual torments of "soli- 
tude, scorn and despair " set before us; though Shelley 
retains and even multiplies the physical torrrients of 
5 



98 The English Novel 

/Eschylus. A few lines further on, in this same long 
opening speech of Prometheus, we have them thus 
described : 

" Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured ; without herb. 
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. 

The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears 
Of their moon-freezing crystals ; the bright chains 
Eat with their burning cold into my bones. 

The earthquake fiends are charged 

To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds 
When the rocks split and close again behind ; 
While from their wild abysses howling throng 
The genii of the storm, urging the rage 
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail." 

And presently, when after the repulse of Mercury Jove 
begins to stir up new terrors, we hear lone exclaiming: 

" O, sister, look ! white fire 

Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar ; 

How fearfully God's thunder howls behind ! " 

But even in Shelley's array of these terrors we perceive 
a cunning outcrop of modernness in a direction which I 
have not yet mentioned but which we will have frequent 
occasion to notice when we come to read the modern 
novel together ; and that is in the detail of the description 
^schylus paints these conclusions with a big brush, 
and three sweeps of it; Shelley itemizes them. 

It is worth while observing too, that the same spirit 
of detail in modern criticism forces us to convict Shelley 
here of an inconsistency in his scene; for how could this 
" snow-loaded cedar " of lone exist with propriety in a 
scene which Prometheus himself has just described as 
" without herb, insect, or beast, or sound of life ? 



A?id the Priftcipie of its Development. 99 

The same instinct of modernness both in the spiritual- 
ity of the torment and in the minuteness of its descrip- 
tion displays itself a little farther on in the curse of 
Prometheus. Prometheus tells us in this same opening 
speech tliat long ago he uttered a certain awful curse 
against Jove which he now desires to recall ; but it 
would seem that in order to recall it he wishes to hear 
the exact words of it. " What was that curse ? " — he ex- 
claims at the end of the speech; "for ye all heard me 
speak." To this question we have page after page of 
replies from five voices — namely, the Voice of the Moun- 
tains, of the Springs, of the Air, of the Whirlwinds and 
of the Earth — embodying such a mass of falsetto sub- 
limity that Shelley himself would surely have drawn his 
pen through the whole, if he had lived into the term of 
manhood. 

Finally the whole awkward device for getting the 
curse of Prometheus before the reader is consummated by 
raising up the phantasm of Jupiter which repeats the 
curse, word for word. 

In truth, Shelley appears always to have labored under 
an essential immaturity : it is very possible that if he had 
lived a hundred years he would never have become 
a man : he was penetrated with modern ideas, but pene- 
trated as a boy would be, crudely, overmuch, and with 
a constant tendency to the extravagant and illogical : so 
that I call him the modern boy. 

These considerations quite cover the remaining three 
acts of his Prometheus Unbound 2Xi6. render it unnecessary 
for me to quote from them in support of the passages 
already cited. 

The first act contains, indeed, nearly the substance of 
the whole drama. Act II contains no important motive 
except the visit of Asia and Panthea to Demogorgon 



lOO The English Novel 

under the earth. In the third act we have a view of Jove 
surrounded by his ministers ; but in the midst of a short 
speech to them he is suddenly swept into hell for ever- 
lasting punishment. Here, of course, Shelley makes a 
complete departure from the old story of the compromise 
between Jove and Prometheus ; Shelley makes Prome- 
theus scornfully reject such a compromise and allow Jove 
to go down to his doom. Hercules then unbinds Pro- 
metheus who repairs to a certain exquisite interlunar 
cave and there dwells in tranquillity with his beloved Asia. 
The rest of Act iii. is filled with long descriptions of 
the change which comes upon the world with the de- 
thronement of Jove. Act IV. is the most amazing piece 
of surplusage in literature ; the catastrophe has been 
reached long ago in the third act. Jove is in eternal 
duress, Prometheus has been liberated and has gone with 
Asia and Panthea to his eternal paradise above the earth, 
and a final radiant picture of the reawakening of man 
and nature under the new regime has closed up the 
whole with the effect of a transformation-scene. Yet, upon 
all this, Shelley drags in Act iv. which is simply leaden 
in action and color along-side of Act in. and in which 
the voices of unseen spirits, the chorus of Hours, Jove> 
Panthea, Demogorgon, the Earth and the Moon pelt each 
other with endless sweetish speeches that rain like ineffec- 
tual comfits in a carnival of silliness. For example, a 
Voice of Unseen Spirits cries : 

" Bright clouds float in heaven, 

Dew-stars gleam on earth, 

Waves assemble on ocean : 

They are gathered and driven 

By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee ! 

They shake with emotion, 

They dance in their mirth. 

But wkere are ye ? 



And the Prmciple of its Development. loi 

The pine boughs are singing 

Old songs with new gladness ; 

The billows and fountains 

Fresh music are flinging 

Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea ; 

The storms mock the mountains 

With the thunder of gladness. 

But where are ye ? " 

The people thus inquired for, being the chorus of 
Hours, sleepily reply : 

" The voice of the spirits of air and of earth 
Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep 
Which covered our being and darkened our birth 
In the deep. " 

A Voice. 

In the deep ? 

SEMI-CHORUS. 

Oh, below the deep. 



SEMI-CHORUS I, 

We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep ; 
We have known the voice of love in dreams, 
We have felt the wand of power come and leap- 

SEMI-CHORUS II. 

" As the billows leap in the morning beams," 

CHORUS. 

" Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze, 
Pierce with song heaven's silent light, 
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, 
To check its flight ere the cave of night. 

Once the hungry Hours were hounds 
Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, 
And it limped and stumbled with many wounds 
Through the nightly dells of the desert year. 



I02 The English Novel 

But now oh ! weave the mystic measure 
Of music, and dance, and shapes of hght ; 
Let the Hours and the spirits of night and pleasure 
Like the clouds and sunbeams unite." 

CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 

" We join the throng 

Of the dance and the song, 

By the whirlwind of gladness borne along; 

As the flying-fish leap . 

From the Indian deep 

And mix with the sea-birds half asleep." 

This long lyric outburst, wholly unnecessary to 
an action which was already complete, seems an in- 
structive fact to place before young writers in a time 
when many souls which might be poetic gardens if they 
would compact all their energies into growing two roses 
and a lily — three poems in all, for a lifetime — become 
instead mere wastes of profuse weeds that grow and are 
cut down and cast into the oven with each monthly 
magazine. 

But it would not be fair to leave Shelley with this flat 
taste in our mouths, and I will therefore beg to finish 
our examination of the Prometheus Unboimd by three 
quotations from these last acts, in which his modernness 
of detail and of subtlety, — being exercised upon matters 
capable of such treatment — has made for us some strong 
and beautiful poetry. Here for instance at the opening 
of Scene I. Act II. we have a charming specimen of the 
modern poetic treatment of nature and of landscape, full 
of spirituality and full of detail. The stage direction is 
" Morning ; A Lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. 
Asia, alone." Asia, who is the lovely bride of Prome- 
theus, is awaiting Panthea who is to come with news of 
him. She begins with an invocation of the Spring. 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 03 
Asia. 

" From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended ! 
Yea, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes 
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes, 
And beatings haunt the desolated heart 
Which should have learnt repose, thou hast descended 
Cradled in tempests ; thou dost wake, O Spring! 
O child of many winds ! As suddenly 
Thou comest as the memory of a dream, 
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet ! 
Like genius, or like joy which riseth up , . . 
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds 
The desert of our life. 
This is the season, this the day, the hour ; 
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine. 
Too long desired, too long delaying, come ! 
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl ! 
The point of one white star is quivering still 
Deep in the orange light of widening morn 
Beyond the purple mountains : through a chasm 
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 
Reflects it : now it wanes : it gleams again 
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads 
Of woven cloud unravel the pale air : 
'Tis lost ! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow 
The roseate sunlight quivers : hear I not 
The ^olian music of her sea-green plumes 
Winnowine the crimson dawn ?" 



And here we find some details of underwater life 
which are modern. Two fauns are conversing : one 
inquires where live certain delicate spirits whom they 
hear talking about the woods, but never meet. We are 
here in an atmosphere very much like that of The 
Midsiimmcr-NigJif s Dream. I scarcely know anything 
more compact of pellucid beauty : it seems quite worthy 
of Shakspeare. 



I04 The English Novel 

" SECOND FAUN. 

'Tis hard to tell : 
I have heard those more skill'd in sph-its say, 
The bubbles, which th' enchantment of the sun 
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave 
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools. 
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float 
Under the green and golden atmosphere 
Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves ; 
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air, 
The which they breathed within those lucent domes, 
Ascends to flow like meteors through the night. 
They ride in them, and rein their headlong speed, 
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire 
Under the waters of the earth again." 

Here again, in my third extract, we have poetry which is 
as strong as the other is dainty, and which is as modern 
as geology. Asia is describing a vision in which the 
successive deposits in the crust of the earth are revealed 
to her. The whole treatment is detailed, modern, vivid, 
powerful. 

" . . . i . The beams flash on 

And make appear the melancholy ruins 

Of cancell'd cycles : anchors, beaks of ships ; 

Planks turn'd to marble ; quivers, helms, and spears ; 

And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels 

Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry 

Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts, 

Round which death laugh'd, sepulchred emblems 

Of dread destruction, ruin within ruin ! 

Whose population which the earth grew over 

Was mortal, but not human ; see, they lie. 

Their monstrous works and uncouth skeletons, 

Their statues, domes, and fanes, prodigious shapes 

Huddled in gray annihilation, split, 

Jamm'd in the hard, black deep ; and over these 

The anatomies of unknown winged things. 

And fishes which were isles of living scale, 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 05 

And serpents, bony chains, twisted around 
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust 
To which the torturous strength of their last pangs 
Had crushed the iron crags ; and over these 
The jagged alligator, and the might 
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once 
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores, 
And weed-overgrown continents of earth. 
Increased and multiplied like summer worms 
On an abandoned corpse till the blue globe 
Wrapt deluge round it like a cloak, and they 
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished ; or some God, 
Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried 
Be not! And like my words they were no more. " 

Shelley appears not to have been completely satisfied 
with the Prometheus story. This dissatisfaction displays 
itself in a characteristic passage of his preface to the 
Prometheus, which happens very felicitously to intro- 
duce the only other set of antique considerations I shall 
offer you on this subject. " Let this opportunity, " (he 
says in one place) " be conceded to me of acknowledging 
that I have what a Scotch philosopher characteristically 
terms 'a passion for reforming the world' .... 
But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical 
compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, 
or that I consider them in any degree as containing a 
reasoned system on the theory of Jiuman life . . . 

. . . Should I live to accomplish what I pur- 
pose, that is, produce a systematical history of what 
appear to me to be the genuine elements of human 
society, let not the advocates of injustice and superstition 
flatter themselves that I should take .^schylus rather 
than Plato as my model." 

In Shelley's poem we have found much of the modern- 
ness between the lines, or appearing as the result, 
merely, of that spirit of the time which every writer must 

5* 



io6 The English Novel 

share to a greater or less extent with his fellow-beings of 
the same period. But as we proceed now to examine 
Bayard Taylor's poem, Prince Denkalion, we find a 
man not only possessed with modernness, but con- 
sciously possessed ; so that what was implicit in Shelley — 
and a great deal more — here becomes explicit and 
formulated. 

As one opens the book, a powerful note of modernness 
in the drama, as opposed to the drama of ^Eschylus, 
strikes us at the outset in the number of the actors. One 
may imagine the amazement of old .^schylus as he 
read dowft this truly prodigious array of dramatos 
prosopa : 

Eos, Goddess of the Dawn : Gaea, Goddess of the 
Earth; Eros; Prometheus; Epimetheus; Pandora; 
Prince Deukalion ; Pyrrha; Agathon ; Medusa; Calchas ; 
Buddha ; Spirits of Dawn ; Nymphs ; Chorus of Ghosts ; 
Charon; Angels; Spirits; The Nine Muses; Urania; 
Spirit of the Wind ; Spirit of the Snow ; Spirit of the 
Stream ; Echoes ; the Youth ; the Artist ; the Poet ; 
the Shepherd ; the Shepherdess ; the Mediaeval Chorus ; 
Mediaeval Anti-Chorus ; Chorus of Builders ; Four 
Messengers. With these materials Mr. Taylor's aim is 
to array before us the whole panorama of time, painted 
in symbols of the great creeds which have characterized 
each epoch. These epochs are four ; and one act is 
devoted to each. In the first act we have the passing 
away of nymph and satyr and the whole antique Greek 
mythos ; and we are shown the coming man and woman 
in the persons of Prince Deukalion and Pyrrha, his 
wife-to-be, whose figures, however, are as yet merely 
etched upon a mist of prophecy. 

In Act II, Ave have the reign and fall of the mediaeval 
faith, all of which is mysteriously beheld by these same 



And tJie P^'inciple of its Development. 107 

shadowy personalities, Deukalion and Pyrrha. In Act 

III. the faith of the present is similarly treated. In Act 

IV. we have at last the coming man, or developed 
personality fairly installed as ruler of himself and of the 
world, and Prince Deukalion and Pyrrha, the ideal man 
and the ideal woman, now for the first time united in 
deed as well as in inspiration, pace forth into the world 
to learn it and to enjoy it. Mr. Taylor, as I said, is so 
explicit upon the points of personality and modernness 
as compared with the ^Eschylean play, that few quota- 
tions would be needed from his work, and I will not 
attempt even such a sketch of it as that of Shelley's. 
For example, in Scene i. Act i, of Prince Deukalion 
Scene i being given in the stage direction as 

" A plain sloping from liigh mountains towards the sea; 
at the base of the mountains lofty, vaidted entrances of cav- 
erns ; a ridned temple on a rocky Jieight ; a shepherd asleep 
in the shadow of a clump of laurels ; the jlock scattered 
over the plain',' — a shepherd awakes and wonderingly 
describes his astonishment at certain changes which have 
occurred during his sleep. This shepherd, throughout 
the book, is a symbol of the mass of the common people, 
the great herd of men. Voices from various directions 
interrupt his ejaculations : and amongst other utterances 
of this sort, we have presently one from the nymphs — as 
representative of the Greek nature — myths — which is 
quite to our present purpose. 

Nymphs 

(Who are to the shepherd voices, and nothing more) : 

" Our service hath ceased for you, shepherds ! 
We fade from your days and your dreams, 
With the grace that was hthe as a leopard's, 
The joy that was swift as a stream's ! 
To the musical reeds, and the grasses ; 



io8 The English Novel 

To the forest, the copse, and the dell ; 
To the mist and the rainbow that passes. 
The vine, and the goblet, farewell ! 
Go, drink from the fountains that flow not ! 
Our songs and our whispers are dumb: — 
But the thing ye are doing ye know not, 
Nor dreani of the thing that shall come." 

In Scene iv., Deukalion, leading Pyrrha, passes into 
a cavern, the last mouth of Hades left on the earth. 
Presently, the two emerge upon " a shadowy, colorless 
landscape," and are greeted by a chorus of ghosts, which 
very explicitly formulates that dreary impossibility of 
growth which I pointed out in the last lecture as incident 
to the old conception of personality. 

" Chorus of Ghosts. 

" Away ! 
Ashes that once were fires, 
Darkness that once was day. 
Dead passions, dead desires. 
Alone can enter here ! 
In rest there is no strife, 
* * * * 

Like some forgotten star, 
What first we were, we are. 
The past is adamant : 
The future will not grant 
That, which in all its range 
We pray for — change," 

In spite of these warnings, they push on, find Charon 
at his old place by the dark river, but are left to row 
themselves across, Charon pleading age and long-unused 
joints; and, after many adventures, find Prometheus, who 
very distinctly declares to Prince Deukalion and Pyrrha 
their mission. 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 09 

" Since thou adrift," 

says Prometheus, 

" And that immortal woman by thy side 
Floated above submerged barbarity 
To anchor, weary, on the cloven mount, 
Thou wast my representative." 

Prince Deukalion — as perhaps many will remember — 
is the Noah of the old Promethean cyclus, and the story 
ran, that the drowned world was miraculously repeopled 
by him and Pyrrha. In the same speech Prometheus 
introduces to Deukalion as a future helper his brother 
Epimetheus — one of the most striking conceptions of the 
old fable, and one of the most effective characters in Mr. 
Taylor's presentation. We saw in the last lecture that 
Prometheus was called the Provident, — the pro-methcus 
being a looking forward. Precisely opposite is Epime- 
theus, that is, he who looks cpi — upon or backward. 
Perhaps it is a fair contrast to regard Prometheus as a 
symbol of striving onward or progress ; and Epimetheus 
as a symbol of the historic instinct, — the instinct which 
goes back and clears up the past as if it were the future ; 
which with continual effort reconstructs it ; which keeps 
the to-be in full view of what has been ; which reconciles 
progress and conservation. Accordingly, the old story 
reports Epimetheus as oldest at his birth, and growing 
younger with the progress of the ages. 

" Take one new comfort " 

says Prometheus) 

Epimetheus lives. 
Though here beneath the shadow of the crags. 
He seems to slumber, head on nerveless knees, 
His life increases ; oldest at his birth, 



1 1 o The English Novel 

The ages heaped behind him shake the snow 
From hoary locks, and slowly give him youth, 
'Tis he shall be thy helper : Brother, rise ! 

EPIMETHEUS — {coining forward) 
I did not sleep : I mused. Ha ! comest thou, Deukalion ? 

PROMETHEUS. 

Soon thy work shall come !, 

Shame shall cease 
When midway on their paths our mighty schemes 
Meet, and complete each other ! Yet my son, 
Deukalion — yet one other guide I give, 
Eos ! " 

And presently Prometheus leads Deukalion and Pyrrha 
to what is described in the stage-direction as " The highest 
verge of the rocky table-land of Hades, looking eastward^ 
Eos is summoned by Prometheus, much high conver- 
sation ensues, and this, the sixth and last scene of the 
first Act ends thus : 

Eos, {addressing young Deukalion and Pyrrha.) 

Faith, when none believe ; 

Truth, when all deceive ; 

Freedom, when force restrained ; 

Courage to sunder chains ; 

Pride, when good is shame ; 

Love, when love is blame, — 

These shall call me in stars and flame ! 

Thus if your souls have wrought, 
Ere-ye approach me, I shine unsought." 

But Eos proceeds to warn Deukalion and Pyrrha of 
long trial, and of many disappointments, closing thus : 

" When darkness falls, 
And what may come is hard to see ; 
When solid adamant walls 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 1 1 

Seem built agninst the Future that shall be ; 
When Faith looks backward, Hope dies, Life appals, 
Think most of Morning and of me ! 

[The rosy glow in the sky fades away] 

Peometheus (to Prince Deukalion)^ 
Go back to Earth, and wait ! 

Pandora (to Pyrrhd), 
Go : and fulfil our fate !" 

This sketch of the first Act of Taylor's work is so 
typical of the remainder that I need not add quotations 
from the second, or third, or fourth Act : the explicit 
modernness of the treatment, the spirituality, the person- 
ality, of it, everywhere forms the most striking contrast 
to the treatment of ^schylus ; and I will close the case 
as to Prince Dcukalion by quoting the subtle and wise 
words of Prometheus which end the play. The time is 
the future : the coming man and woman, Dcukalion and 
Pyrrha, after long trial, and long separation, are at last 
allowed to marry, and to begin their earthly life. These 
are Prometheus' parting words to them. It would be 
difficult to imagine one plane of thought farther removed 
from another than is that of the time-spirit which here 
speaks through Taylor, from the time-spirit which speaks 
through ^schylus. Remembering the relations between 
man and inexorable nature, between man and the exter- 
minating god which we saw revealed by the Prometheus 
of ^schylus, listen to these relations prophesied by the 
Prometheus of Taylor, — 

" Retrieve perverted destiny !" 

(In ^schylus, when once " destiny" is about, all re- 
trieval grows absurd.) 



1 1 2 The English Novel 

'Tis this shall set your children free. 

The forces of your race employ 

To make sure heritage of joy ; 

Yet feed, with every earthly sense, 

Its heavenly coincidence, — 

That, as the garment of an hour, 

This,, as an everlasting power. 

For Life, whose source not here began, 

Must fill the utmost sphere of Man, 

And so expanding, lifted be 

Along the line of God's decree, 

To find in endless growth all good ; 

In endless toil, beatitude. 

Seek not to know Him ; yet aspire 

As atoms toward the central fire ! 

Not lord of race is He, afar, — 

Of Man, or Earth, or any star. 

But of the inconceivable All ; 

"Whence nothing that there is can fall 

Beyond Him, but may nearer rise. 

Slow-circling through eternal skies. 

His larger life ye cannot miss, 

In gladly, nobly using this. 

Now, as a child in April hours 

Clasps tight its handful of first flowers, " 

Homeward, to meet His purpose, go ! 

These things are all ye need to know. 

We have seen that Shelley thought of producing a 
history of " the genuine elements of human society," 
taking Plato as his model, instead of ^schylus. Had 
J he done so, how is it likely he would have fared ? It so 
happens that of all the monstrosities of thought which 
we find in the whole Greek cultus, based upon the failure 
to conceive personality, the most monstrous are those 
which originated with Plato. And since you have now 
heard this word personality until your patience must be 
severely taxed, I am glad to. say that I can now close 
this whole pending argument which I have announced 



And the Principle of its Developinent, 1 1 3 

as our first line of research in a short and conclusive 
way by asking you to consider for a moment the com- 
plete massacre and deliberate extermination of all 
those sacred bases of personality upon which the fabric 
of our modern society rests in that ideal society which 
Plato has embodied in his Republic. Nothing is more 
irresistible than the conviction that the being who planned 
Plato's Republic could neither have had the least actual 
sense of his own personality nor have recognized even 
theoretically the least particle of its real significance. 
Fortunately this examination can be made with great 
brevity by confining our attention to the three quite 
conclusive matters of marriage, children, and property as 
they are provided for in Book V. of Plato's Republic. 

At line 460 of that book we find Socrates inquiring : 
"And how can marriages be made most beneficial " in 
our ideal republic ? and presently answering his own 
question in due form. I quote here and there, to make 
the briefest possible showing of the plan. " Why the 
principle has been already laid down, that the best of 
either sex should be united with the best as often as 
possible ; and that inferiors should be prevented from 
marrying at all." "Now these goings on must be a 
secret which the rulers only know, ... or there will be 
a farther danger of our herd . . . breaking into rebel- 
lion." To these ends we had " better appoint certain 
festivals at which the brides and bridegrooms " (whom 
the rulers have previously selected with care and secrecy 
" will be brought together, and sacrifices will be offered 
and suitable hymeneal songs composed by our poets ;" 
. . . and we " invent some ingenious kind of lots which 
the less worthy may draw." In short, the provision for 
marriage is that the rulers shall determine each year 
how many couples shall marry, and shall privately de- 



1 1 4 The English Novel 

signate a certain number of the healthiest couples for 
that purpose ; at the annual festival all marriageable 
couples assemble and draw lots, these lots having pre- 
viously been so arranged that all unhealthy or in any 
way inferior couples shall draw blanks. Of course this 
is fraud ; but Plato defends it against Glaucon's objection 
thus: since "our rulers will have to practice on the body 
corporate with medicines, our rulers will find a consider- 
able dose of these" (that is, of falsehood and deceit) 
■" necessary for the good of their subjects ; . . . and this 
lawful use of them seems likely to be often needed in 
the regulations of marriages." The couples thus mar- 
ried eat at a common table. A brave youth, as a reward 
of valor, is allowed more than one wife. 

Such are the marriage-arrangements of Plato's ideal 
republic, except that I have omitted all the most mon- 
strous provisions, giving only the rosiest view of it. 
Reserving comment, let us see how the children are 
provided for. Immediately after birth " The proper 
officers will take the offspring of the good " or (healthy) 
" parents to " a certain common " fold, and there .... 
deposit them with certain nurses ; but the offspring of 
the inferior, or of the better where they chance to be 
deformed, will be put away in some mysterious unknown 
place, as decency requires;" the mothers are afterwards 
allowed to come to the fold to nourish the children, but 
the officers are to take the greatest care that "no mother 
recognizes her own child :" of course these children, 
when they grow up are to be also bridegrooms and 
brides, and the problem of how to prevent unknown 
brothers and sisters, and the like, — from marrying is 
duly attended to : but the provisions for this purpose 
are at once so silly and so beastly — nay, they out- 
beast the beasts — that surely no one can read them 



And the Pnnciple of its Development. 1 1 5 

without wishing to blot out the moment in which he 
did so. 

And lastly property is thus disposed of. " Then " 
(line 482, Bk. V. Republic) " the community of wives 
and children is clearly the source of the greatest good 
to the State, .... and agrees with the other principle 
that the guardians " — the guardians are the model 
citizens of this ideal republic — -"are not to have houses 
or lands or any other property ; their pay is to be their 
food and they are to have no private expenses ; . . . . 
Both the community of property and the community of 
families . . . tend to make them more truly guardians ; 
they will not tear the city in pieces by differing about 
ineiim and tiiiim ; the one dragging any acquisition 
which he has made into a house of his own, where he 
has a separate wife and children . . . , and another 
into another ; . . . . but all will be affected as far as 
may be by the same pleasures and pains ; . . . and, as 
they have nothing but their persons which they can call 
their own, suits and complaints will have no existence 
among them." 

Now, as soon as the ideal dispositions of Plato are 
propounded to a modern hearer, they send an instanta- 
neous shock to the remotest ends of his nature ; and 
what I will ask you to do at present is to formulate this 
shock in terms of personality. Taking for example the 
Platonic provision with regard to marriage (how gro- 
tesquely, by the way, these provisions show alongside of 
what have gained great currency as " Platonic attach- 
ments ") : perhaps the two thousand years since Plato, 
have taught us nothing so clearly as that one of the 
most mysterious and universal elements of personality, 
is that marvelous and absolutely inconsequential principle 
by which a given man finds himself determined to love 



Ii6 The English Novel 



cb ' 



a certain woman, or a given woman determined to love 
a certain man ; and if we look back we find that the most 
continuous travail of the ages has been to secure perfect 
freedom for these determinations. 

Does it not seem as if Time grinned at us in some 
horrible dream when we remind ourselves that here the 
divine Plato, as he has been called, and the unspeakable 
Zola (as some of us have learned to call him) have 
eibsolutely come cheek by jowl, and that the physiolo- 
gical marriage of Zola's is no more nor less than the 
ideal marriage of Plato ? 

Rejecting comment on the child-nursing arrangement 
of Plato it is instructive to pass on and regard from a 
different point of view, though still from the general 
direction of personality, the Platonic community of 
property. If men desire property says Plato, " one 
man's desire will contravene another's, and we shall 
have trouble. How shall we remedy it? Crush out 
the desire ; and to that end abolish property." 

But no, cries modern personality to Plato, cannot you 
imagine such an extension of personality as to make each 
man see that on the whole the shortest way to carry out 
his desires for property is to respect every other man's 
desire for property, and thus, in the regulations which 
will necessarily result from this mutual respect, to secure 
everything he acquires by spiritual considerations in- 
finitely more effective than spears and bars ? 

We had occasion to observe the other day how com- 
plete has been the success of this doctrine here in the 
United States : we found that the real government now 
going on is individual, personal, — not at Washington 
and that we have every proper desire, — of love in mar- 
riage, of having one woman to wife, of cherishing our 
own children, of accumulating property, — secured by 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 1 7 

external ,law apparently, and really by respect for that 
law and the principles of personality it embodies. 

It seems curious to me here to make two further points 
of contact, which taken with the Zola point just made, 
seem to tax the extremes of the heavens and the earth. 
Plato's organic principle appears to emerge from some 
such consideration as this : — A boy ten years old is 
found to possess a wondrous manual deftness : he can do 
anything with his fingers : word is brought to Plato : 
what shall the State do with this boy ? Why, says Plato, 
if he be manually so adroit, likely he will turn pickpocket : 
the plain course is to chop off his hands, — or to expose 
him to die in one of those highly respectable places such 
as decency requires for generally unavailable children. 

No, says the modern man : you are destroying his 
manifest gift, the very deepest outcome of his personality : 
he might be a pickpocket, true, but then he might be a 
great violinist, he might be a great worker in all manner 
of materials requiring deftness : instead of cutting off his 
hands, let us put him at an industrial school, let us set 
him to playing the violin, let us cherish him, let us develop 
his personality. So, Plato takes the gift of acquiring 
property — for it is a real gift and blessing to man, if 
properly developed — and he will chop it off, that is, he 
will crush out the desire of property by destroying the 
possibility of its exercise. 

And what is this in its outcome but the Nirvana of the 
Buddhists ? My passions keep me in fear and hope ; 
therefore I will annihilate them : when I neither think 
nor desire, then I shall rest, then I shall enjoy Nirvana. 
Plato institutes a Nirvana for the ills of marriage, of 
offspring, of property : and he realizes it by the slow 
death through inanition of the desire for love, for children, 
for property. 



1 1 8 The E71 owlish Novel 



<i>' 



And as we have found the Platonic Plato arguing him- 
self into Zola, the dialectic Plato arguing himself into 
a dreaming Buddha, all for lack of the sense of per- 
sonality, we now find the ideal Plato arguing himself, 
for the same lack, into a brawny Whitman. Think of 
Plato's community of property, and listen to Whitman's 
reverie, as he looks at some cattle. It is curious to notice 
how you cannot escape a certain sense of naivete in this, 
and how you are taken by it, — until a moment's thought 
shows you that the naivete is due to a cunning and bold 
contradiction of every fact in the case. 

" I think I could turn and live with 

animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd : . 
I stand and look at them long and long. 

Not one is dissatisfied — not one is demented 

with the mania of owning things : 
Not one is respectable or industrious over the 

whole earth." 

The Whitman method of reaching ndivete is here so 
queerly illustrated that it seems worth while to stop a 
moment and point it out. Upon the least reflection, one 
must see that " animals" here must mean cows, and well-fed 
cows ; for they are about the only animals in the world 
to whom these items would apply. For says Whitman, 
" not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the 
mania of owning things :" but suppose he were taking 
one of his favorite night-strolls in the woods of Bengal 
rather than of New Jersey, is it not more than probable 
that the first animal he met would be some wicked tiger 
not only dissatisfied, but perfectly demented with the 
mania of owning Whitman, the only kind of property 
the tiger knows ? Seriously, when we reflect that 
property to the animal means no more than food or nest 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 1 9 

or lair, and that the whole wing-shaken air above us, 
the earth-surface about us, the earth-crust below us, the 
seas, and all, are alive day and night with the furious 
activity of animals quite as fairly demented with the 
mania of owning their property as men theirs ; and that 
it is only the pampered beast who is not so demented, — 
the cow, for instance, who has her property duly brought 
to her so many times a day and has no more to do but to 
enjoy the cud thereof until next feed-time, — we have a 
very instructive model of methods by which poetry can 
make itself naive. 

And finally, what a conclusive light is shed upon the 
principles supporting Plato's community of property, 
when we bring forward the fact, daily growing more and 
more notable, that along with the modern passion for 
acquiring property has grown the modern passion of 
giving away property, that is, of charity ? What ancient 
scheme ever dreamed of the multitudinous charitable 
organizations of some of our large cities ? Charity has 
become organic and a part of the system of things : it 
has sometimes overflowed its bounds so that great social 
questions now pend as to how we shall direct the over- 
flowing charitable instincts of society so as really to help 
the needy and not pamper the lazy: its public manifesta- 
tions are daily, its private ministrations are endless. 

Plato would have crushed the instinct of property ; but 
the instinct, vital part of man's personality, as it is, has 
taken care of itself, has been cherished and encouraged 
by the modern cultus, and behold, instead of breeding a 
wild pandemonium of selfishness as Plato argued, it has 
in its orderly progress developed this wonderful new out- 
growth of charity which fills every thoughtful man's 
heart with joy, because it covers such a multitude of the 
sins of the time. 



I20 The Eitglish Novel 

I have been somewhat earnest — I fear tediously so — 
upon this matter, because I have seen what seem the 
greatest and most mischievous errors concerning it, 
receiving the stamp of men who usually think with 
clearness and who have acquired just authority in many 
premises. 

It would not be fair to the very different matters which 
I have now to treat, to detail these errors ; and I will 
only mention that if, with these principles of personality 
fairly fixed in one's mind, one reads for example the 
admif-able Introduction of Professor Jowett to his trans- 
lation of Plato's Republic, one has a perfect clew to many 
of the problems' over which that translator labors with 
results which, I think, cannot be conclusive to his own 
mind. 

Here, too, no one can be satisfied with the otherwise 
instructive chapter on Individuality in Professor Eucken's 
Fundamental Coricepts of Modern Pliilosophic Thought. 
Eucken's direct reference to Plato's Republic is evidently 
made upon only a very vague recollection of Plato's 
doctrine, which is always dangerous. " The complete 
subordination and sacrifice of the individual expressed 
in Plato's idea of a state arose from his opposition to a 
tendency of the times which he considered pernicious, 
and so is characterized rather by moral energy and 
intensity of feeling than by the quiet and simple resig- 
nation to the objection which we find in the great men 
of the preceding period." But a mere opposition to a 
tendency of the times could never have bred this elabo- 
rate and sweeping annihilation of individuality ; and it is 
forgotten that Plato is not here legislating for his times 
or with the least dream of the practical establishment of 
his Republic : again and again he declares his doubts as 
to the practicability of his plans for any time. No ; he 



And the Principle of its DevelopmeJit. i 2 1 

is building a republic for all time, and is consistently- 
building upon the ruins of that personality which he was 
not sensible of except in its bad outcome as selfishness. 
I must add, too, that there was an explicit theory of 
what was called Individuality among the Greeks ; the 
phenomenon of the unaccountable differences of men 
from birth early attracted those sharp eyes, and the 
Stoics and others soon began to build in various direc- 
tions from this basis. But just as the Greeks had a 
theory of harmony — though harmony was not developed 
until the last centurj^ — as Richter says somewhere that 
a man may contemplate the idea of death for twenty 
years, and only in some moment of the twenty-first 
suddenly have the realization of death come upon him, 
and shake his soul ; so their theory of individuality 
must have been wholly amateur, not a working element, 
and without practical result. Surely, we seem in condi- 
tion to say so with confidence if you run your minds 
back along this line of development which now comes 
to an end. For what have we done? We have inter- 
rogated ^schylus and Plato, whom we may surely call 
the two largest and most typic spirits of the whole Greek 
cultus, upon the main fact of personality; we have verified 
the abstract with the concrete by questioning them upon 
the most vital and well-known elements of personality: 
what do you believe about spiritual growth, about spirit- 
ual compactness, about true love, marriage, children, 
property? and we have received answers which show us 
that they have not yet caught a conception of what per- 
sonality means, and that when they explicitly discuss 
individuality in their theories, it is a discussion of blind 
men about colors. 
6 



122 The English Novel 



VI. 



We are now to enter upon the second of our four lines 
of study by concentrating our attention upon three 
historic details in the growth of this persona hty whose 
general advance has been so carefully illustrated in our 
first line. These details are found in the sudden rise of 
Physical Science, of Modern Music, and of the Modern 
Novel, at periods of time so little separated from each 
other, that we may consider these great fields of human 
activity as fairly opened simultaneously to the en- 
trance of man about the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. 

Addressing ourselves first, then, to the idea of Science, 
let us place ourselves at a point of view from which we 
can measure with precision the actual height and nature 
of the step which man took in ascending from the plane 
of, say, Aristotle's " science " to that of Sir Isaac New- 
ton's " science." And the only possible method of 
placing ourselves at this point of view is to pass far back 
and fix ourselves in the attitude which antiquity main- 
tained towards physical nature, and in which succeeding 
ages comfortably dozed, scarcely disturbed even by Roger 
Bacon's feeble protest in the thirteenth century, until it 
was shocked out of all future possibility by Copernicus, 
Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton. 

Accordingly, in pursuance of our custom of abandon- 
ing abstract propositions at the earliest moment, when 
we can embody them in terms of the concrete, let us 
spend a quiet hour in contemplating some of the specific 



A?id the Principle of its Development. 123 

absurdities of our ancestors in scientific thought and in 
generahzing them into the lack of personality. Let us 
go and sit with Socrates on his prison-bed, in the PhcBdo, 
and endeavor to see this matter of man's scientific rela- 
tion to physical nature, with his sight. Hear Socrates 
talking to Simmias : he is discussing the method of ac- 
quiring true knowledge : it is well we are invisible as we 
sit by him, for we can not keep back a quiet smile, — we 
who come out of a beautiful and vast scientific acquire- 
ment all based upon looking at things with our eyes; we 
whose very intellectual atmosphere is distilled from the 
proverb, " seeing is believing " — when we hear these grave 
propositions of the wisest antique man. " But what of 
the acquisition of wisdom," says Socrates: , . . . 
" do the sight and hearing convey any certainty to man- 
kind, or are they such as the poets incessantly report 
them, who say that we neither hear nor see anything as 
it is ? . . . Do they not seem so to you ?" 

" They do, indeed," replied Simmias. " When, then," 
continued .Socrates, " does the soul attain to the truth ? 
For when it attempts to investigate anything along with 
the body, it is plain that the soul is led astray by the 

body Is it not by reasoning, if by anything, 

that reality is made manifest to the soul ? " 

" Certainly." 

But now Socrates advances a step to show that not 
only are we misled when we attempt to get knowledge 
by seeing things, but that nothing worth attention is 
capable of being physically seen. I shall have occasion 
to recur in another connection to the curious fallacy 
involved in this part of Socrates' argument. He goes 
on to inquire of Simmias : " Do we assert that Justice is 
anything, or not ? " 

" We say that it is." 



124 '^^^^ English Novel 

" And beauty and goodness, also ? " 

" Surely." 

" Did you ever see anything of the kind with your 
eyes ? " 

" Never," replied Simmias. 

..." Then," continues Socrates, " whoever amongst 
us prepares, with the greatest caution and accuracy, to 
reflect upon that particular thing by itself upon which he 

is inquiring " and " using reflection alone, 

endeavors to investigate every reality by itself, . . . 
abstaining as much as possible from the use of the eyes 
. . . is not such an one, if any, likely to arrive at what 
really exists ? " 

" You speak, Socrates," answered Simmias, " with 
amazing truth." 

It is curious to note in how many particulars this pro- 
cess of acquiring knowledge is opposed to that of the 
modern scientific man. Observe specially that Socrates 
wishes to investigate every reality by itself, while we, on 
the contrary, fly from nothing with so much vehemence 
as from an isolated fact ; it maddens us until we can put 
it into relation with other facts, and delights us in pro- 
portion to the number of facts with which we can relate 
it.. In that book of multitudinous suggestions which 
Novalis (Friedrich Von Hardenberg) calls T/i^ Pupil at 
Sais, one of the most modern sentences is that where, 
after describing many studies of his wondrous pupil, 
Novalis adds that " erelong he saw nothing alone." 

Surely, one of the earliest and most delightful sensa- 
tions one has in spiritual growth, after one has acquired 
the true synthetic habit which converts knowledge into 
wisdom, is that delicious, universal impulse which ac- 
companies every new acquisition as it runs along like 
a warp across the woof of our existing acquisition, mak- 



A?id ike Principle of its Devclopmeril. 125 

ing a pleasant tang of contact, as it were, Avith each related 
fibre. 

But Plato speaks even more directly upon our present 
point, in advocating a similar attitude towards physical 
science. In Book VII. of the Republic, he puts these 
words into the mouth of Socrates: "And whether a 
man gapes at the heavens, or blinks on the ground, seek- 
ing to learn some particular of sense, I would deny 
that he can learn, for nothing of that sort is matter of 
science." 

Of course these, as the opinions of professed idealists, 
would not be representative of the Greek attitude towards 
physical science. 

Yet when we turn to those who are ' pre-eminently 
physical philosophers, we find that the mental disposi- 
tion, though the reverse of hostile, is nearly always such 
as to render the work of these philosophers unfruitful. 
When we find, for example, that Thales in the very 
beginning of Greek philosophy holds the principle, or 
beginning, )J o.nyrj of all things to be moisture, or water; 
that Anaximenes a little while after holds the beginning 
of things to be air; that Heraclitus holds the arche to be 
fire : this sounds physical, and we look for a great 
extension of men's knowledge in regard to water, air 
and fire, upon the idea that if these are really the organic 
principles of things, thousands of keen inquiring eyes 
would be at once leveled upon them, thousands of 
experiments would be at once set on foot, all going to 
reveal properties of water, air and fire. 

But perhaps no more expressive summary of the real 
relation between man and nature, not only during the 
Greek period but for many centuries after it, could be 
given than the fact that these three so-called elements 
which begin the Greek physical philosophy remained 



126 The English Novel 

themselves unknown for more than two thousand years 
after Thales and Anaximenes and Heraclitus, until the 
very last century when, with the discovery of oxygen, 
men are able to prove that they are not elements at all ; 
but that what we call fire is merely an effect of the rapid 
union of oxygen with bodies, while water and air are 
compounds of it with other gases. It is perfectly true 
that in the years between Thales and the death of 
Aristotle, a considerable body of physical facts had been 
accumulated; that Pythagoras had observed a number of 
acoustic phenomena and mathematically formulated 
their relations ; it is true that — without detaining you to 
specify intermediate inquirers — we have that wonderful 
summary of Aristotle — wonderful for one man — which 
is contained in his Physics, from which the name " meta- 
physics " originated, though the circumstance that he 
placed the other books after those on physics, calling 
them Ta [lera to. ifuor/A ^cfiAca, the meta-physical, or 
over and above physical, books. 

When we read the titles of these productions — here 
are " Eight Books of Physical Lectures," " Four Books 
of the Heavens," " Two Books of Production and 
Destruction," Treatises " On Animals," " On Plants," 
" On Colors," " On Sound " — we feel that we must be 
in a veritable realm of physical science. But if we 
examine these lectures and treatises, which probably 
contain the entire body of Greek physical learning, we 
find them hampered by a certain disability which seems 
to me characteristic not only of Greek thought, but of 
all man's early speculation, and which excludes the 
possibility of a fruitful and progressive physical science. 
I do not know how to characterize this disability other- 
wise than by calling it a lack of that sense of personal 
relation to fact which makes the thinker passionately and 



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A)id ike Principle of its Development. 127 

supremely solicitous about the truth, that is, the exist- 
ence of his facts and the soundness of his logic ; solicitous 
of these, not so much with reference to the value of his 
conclusions as because of an inward tender inexorable 
yearning for the truth and nothing but the truth. 

In short, I find that early thought everywhere, whether 
dealing with physical facts or metaphysical problems, is 
lacking in what I may call the intellectual conscience — 
the conscience, for example, which makes Mr. Darwin 
spend long and patient years in investigating small facts 
before daring to reason upon them ; and which makes 
him state the facts adverse to his theory with as much 
care as the facts which make for it. 

Part of the philosophy of this personal relation between 
a man and a fact is very simple. For instance what do 
you know at present of the inner life of the Patagonians? 
Probably no more than your Mitchell's or Cornell's 
Geography told you at school. But if a government 
expedition is soon to carry you to the interior of that 
country, a personal relation arises which will probably 
set you to searching all the libraries at your command 
for such travels or treatises as may enlarge your 
knowledge of Patagonia. 

It is easy to give a thousand illustrations of this lack 
of intellectual conscience in Greek thought, which con- 
tinued indeed up to the time of the Renaissance. For 
example : it would seem that nothing less than a sort of 
amateur mental attitude towards nature, an attitude which 
does not bind the thinker to his facts with such iron con- 
scientiousness that if one fact were out of due order, it 
would rack him, could account for Aristotle's grave ex- 
position of the four elements. " We seek," he says "the 
principles of sensible things, that is of tangible bodies. 
We must take therefore not all the contrarieties of quality 



128 The English Novel 

but those only which have reference to the touch . . . 
Now the contrarieties of quahty which refer to the touch 
are these : hot, cold ; dry, wet ; heavy, light; hard, soft; 
unctuous, meagre; rough, smooth; dense, rare." Aris- 
totle then rejects the last three couplets on several 
grounds and proceeds : " Now in four things there are 
six combinations of two ; but the combinations of two 
opposites, as hot and cold, must be rejected ; we have 
therefore four elementary combinations which agree with 
the four apparently elementary bodies. Fire is hot and 
dry ; air is hot and wet ; water is cold and wet : earth is 
cold and dry." And thus we comfortably fare forward 
with fire, air, earth and water for the four elements of all 
things. 

But Aristotle argues that there must be a fifth element: 
and our modern word quintessence is, by the way, a relic 
of this argument, this fifth element having been called by 
later writers quinta essentia or quintessence. The argu- 
ment is as follows : " the simple elements must have simple 
motions, and thus fire and air have their natural motions 
upwards and water and earth have their natural motions 
downwards ; but besides these motions there is motion 
in a circle which is unnatural to these elements, but 
which is a more perfect motion than the other, because a 
circle is a perfect line and a straight line is not ; and there 
must be something to which this motion is natural. From 
this it is evident that there is some essence or body dif- 
ferent from those of the four elements, . . . and superior to 
them. If things which move in a circle move contrary 
to nature it is marvelous, or rather absurd that this, the 
unnatural motion should alone be continuous and eternal ; 
for unnatural motions decay speedily. And so from all 
this we nmst collect that besides the four elements which 
we have here and about us, there is another removed far 



A7id the Pnnciple of its Develop^nent. 1 29 

off and the more excellent in proportion as it is more 
distant from us." 

Or take Aristotle's dealing with the heaviness and 
lightness of bodies. 

After censuring former writers for considering these 
as merely relative, he declares that lightness is a positive 
or absolute property of bodies j ust as weight is ; that earth 
is absolutely heavy, and therefore tends to take its place 
below the other three elements ; that fire has the positive 
property of lightness, and hence tends to take its place 
above the other three elements ; (the modern word 
empyrean is a relic of this idea from the pyr ox fire, thus 
collected in the upper regions), and so on ; and concludes 
that bodies which have the heavy property tend to the 
centre, while those with the light property tend to the 
exterior, of the earth, because " Exterior is opposite to 
Centre, as heavy is to light." 

This conception, or rather misconception, of opposites 
appears most curiously in two of the proofs which Socrates 
offers for the immortality of the soul, and I do not know 
how I can better illustrate the infirmity of antique thought 
which I have just been describing than by citing the 
arguments of Socrates in that connection according to 
the PJiccdo. Socrates introduced it with special solemnity. 
" I do not imagine," he say.s, "that any one, not even if 
he were a comic poet, would now say that I am trifling 
. . . Let us examine it in this point of view, whether the 
souls of the dead survive or not. 

" Let us consider this, whether it is absolutely necessary in the 
case of as many things as have a contrary, that this contrary should 
arise from no other source than from a contrary to itself. For in- 
stance, where anything becomes greater, must it not follow that 
from being previously less it subsequently became greater ? 

"Yes." 

6* 



130 The English Novel 

" So, too, if anything becomes less, shall it become so subse- 
quently to its being previously greater ? " 

" Such is the case," said Cebes. 

" And weaker from stronger, swifter from slower, . . . worse 
from better, juster from more unjust ?" 

"Surely." 

"We are then sufficiently assured of this, that all things are so 
produced, contraries from contraries?" 

" Sufficiently so." 

. . . " Do you now tell me likewise in regard to life and 
death. Do you not say that death is the contrary of life .''" 

" I say so." 

" And that they are produced from each other ? " 

" Yes." 

" What then is that which is produced from life ? " 

" Death," said Cebes. 

" And that which is produced from death?" 

" I must allow," said Cebes, "to be life." 

"Therefore, our souls exist after death." 

This is one formal argument of Socrates.' 
He now goes on speaking to his friends during that 
fatal day at great length, setting forth other arguments 
in favor of the immortality of the soul. Finally he 
comes to the argument which he applies to the soul, that 
magnitude cannot admit its contrary, but that one retires 
when the other approaches. At this point he is inter- 
rupted by one who remembers his former position. 
Plato relates : 

Then some one of those present (but who he was I do not clearly 
recollect) when he heard this, said, " In the name of the gods, was 
not the very contrary of what is now asserted laid down in the 
previous part of the discussion, that the greater is produced from 
the less and the less from the greater, and this positively was the 
mode of generating contraries from contraries?" Upon which 
Socrates said ... "... ' Then it was argued that a contrary 
thing was produced from a contrary ; but now, that contrary itself can 
never become its own contrary' . . . But observe further if 



And the Principle of its Development. 131 

you will agree with me in this. Is there anything you call heat and 
cold?" 

" Certainly." 

" The same as snow and fire ?" 

"Assuredly not." 

" Is heat, then, something different from fire, and cold something 
difterent from snow .'' " 

" Yes." 

" But this I think is evident to you, that snow while it is snow 
can never, having admitted heat, continue to be what it was, snow 
and hot ; but on the approach of heat will either give way to it or 
be destroyed." 

" Certainly so." 

" And fire, on the other hand, on the approach of cold, must 
either give way to it or be destroyed ; nor can it ever endure, having 
admitted cold, to continue to be what it was, fire and cold . . . 
Such I assert to be the case with the number 3 and many other 
numbers. Shall we not insist that the number 3 shall perish first 
. . . before it would endure while it was yet 3 to become even ? 
. . . What then ? what do we now call that which does not 
admit the idea of the even ? " 

" Odd," replied he. 

"And that which does not admit the just, nor the graceful ?" 

"The one, ungraceful, and the other, unjust." 

" Be it so. But by what name do we call that wliich does not 
admit death ?" 

" Immortal." 

" Does the soul, then, not admit death ? " (Socrates has already 
suggested that whatever the soul occupies it brings life to.) 

" No." 

" Is the soul, therefore, immortal ? " 

" Immortal." 

Socrates' argument drawn from the number 3 brings 
before us a great host of these older absurdities of scien- 
tific thought, embracing many grave conclusions drawn 
from fanciful considerations of number, everywhere oc- 
curring. For briefest example ; Aristotle in his book 
" On the Heavens " proves that the world is perfect by 



132 The E7igiish Novel 

the following complete argument : " The bodies of which 
the world is composed . . . have three dimensions ; now 
3 is the most perfect number ... for of i we do not 
speak as a number ; of 2 we say botJi ; but 3 is 
the first number of which we say all; moreover, it 
has a beginning, a middle and an end." You may in- 
structively compare with this the marvelous matters 
which the school of Pythagoras educed out of tlieir per- 
fect number which was 4, or the ictractys ; and Plato's 
number of the Republic which commentators to this day 
have not settled. 

These illustrations seem sufficient to show a mental 
attitude towards facts which is certainly like that one has 
towards a far-off country which one does not expect to 
visit. The illustration I have used is curiously borne 
out by a passage in Lactantius, writing so far down as 
the fourth century, in which we have a picture of mediae- 
val relations towards nature and of customary dis- 
cussions. 

" To search," says he, " for the causes of natural 
things ; to inquire whether the sun be as large as he 
seems, whether the moon is convex or concave, whether 
the stars are fixed in the sky or float freely in the air ; 
of what size and what material are the heavens ; whether 
they be at rest or in motion ; what is the magnitude of 
the earth ; on what foundations it is suspended and bal- 
anced ; — to dispute and conjecture on such matters is 
just as if we chose to discuss what we think of a city in 
a remote country of which we never heard but the name." 

Perhaps this defect of thought, this lack of personality 
towards facts, is most strikingly perceived in the slowness 
with which most primar}^ ideas of the form and motion 
of the earth made their way among men. Although as- 
tronomy is the oldest of sciences, and the only one pro- 



Aiid the Prmciple of its Development, 133 

gressive science of antiquity ; and although the idea that 
the earth was a sphere, was one of the earhest in Greek 
philosophy ; yet this same Lactantius in the 4th century 
is vehemently arguing as follows : " Is it possible that 
men can be so absurd as to believe that the crops and 
trees on the other side of the earth hang downwards, 
and that men there have their feet higher than their 
heads ? If you ask of them how they defend these mon- 
strosities—how things do not fall away from the earth on 
that side ? they reply that the nature of things is such 
that heavy bodies tend towards the centre, like the spokes 
of a wheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend 
from the earth towards the heavens on all sides. Now I 
am really at a loss what to say of those who, when they 
have once gone wrong, steadily persevere in their folly 
and defend one absurd opinion by another." 

And coming on down to the eighth century, the anec- 
dote is well known of honest Bishop Virgil of Salisbury, 
who shocked some of his contemporaries by his belief in 
the real existence of the antipodes, to such an extent 
that many thought he should be censured by the Pope for 
an opinion which involved the existence of a whole 
" world of human beings out of reach of the conditions 
of salvation." 

And finally we all know the tribulations of Columbus 
on this point far down in the fifteenth century, at the 
very beginning of the Renaissance. 

Now this infirmity of mind is as I said, not distinctive 
of the Greek. To me it seems simply a natural incident 
of the youth of reason, of the childhood of personality. 
At any rate, for a dozen centuries and more after Aris- 
totle's death, to study science, means to study Aristotle ; 
in vain do we hear Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century 
— that prophet philosopher who first announces the two 



134 The English Novel 

rallying cries of modern science, mathematics and ex- 
periment — in vain do we hear Roger Bacon crying : "If 
I had power over the works of Aristotle I would have 
them all burnt ; for it is only a loss of time, a course of 
error, and a multiplication of ignorance beyond expres- 
sion, to study them." 

Various attempts have been made to account for the 
complete failure of Greek physical science by assigning 
this and that specific tendency to the Greek mind : but it 
seems a perfect confirmation of the view I have here pre- 
sented — to wit that the organic error was not Greek but 
simply a part of the general human lack of personality — • 
to reflect that 1,500 years after Aristotle, things are little 
better, and that when we do come to a time when physi- 
cal science begins to be pursued upon progressive prin- 
ciples, we find it to be also a time when all other depart- 
ments of activity begin to be similarly pursued, so that 
we are obliged to recognize not the correction of any 
specific error in Greek ratiocination, but a general advance 
of the spirit of man along the whole line. 

And perhaps we have now sufficiently prepared our- 
selves, as was proposed at the outset of this sketch of 
Greek science, to measure precisely the height of the 
new plane which begins with Copernicus, Kepler and 
Galileo in the i6th century, over the old plane which 
ended with Aristotle and his commentators. Perhaps 
the true point up to which we should lay our line in 
making this measurement is not to be found until we pass 
nearly through the 17th century and arrive fairly at Sir 
Isaac Newton. For while each one of the great men 
who preceded him had made his contribution weighty 
enough, as such, yet each brings with him some old 
darkness out of the antique period. 

When we come to examine Copernicus, we find that 



And the Pnnciple of its Development. 135 

thougli the root of the matter is there, a palpable en- 
vironment of the old cycle and epicycle still hampers 
it ; Galileo disappoints us at various emergencies. Kepler 
puts forth his sublime laws amid a cluster of startling 
absurdities ; Francis Bacon is on the whole unfaithful ; 
Descartes will have his vortices or eddies as the true 
principles of motion of the heavenly bodies ; and so it 
is not until we reach Sir Isaac Newton at the end of the 
17th century that we find a large, quiet, wholesome 
thinker, de-Aristotleized, de-Ptolemized, de-Cartesianized, 
pacing forth upon the domain of reason as if it were his 
own orchard, and seating himself in the centre of the 
universe as if it were his own easy chair, observing the 
fact and inferring the law as if with a personal passion 
for truth and a personal religion towards order. In 
short, and in terms of our present theory, with Sir Isaac 
Newton the growth of man's personality has reached a 
point when it has developed a true personal relation 
between man and nature. 

I should have been glad if the scope of this part of 
my inquiry had allowed me to give some sketch at least 
of the special workers in science who immediately pre- 
ceded Newton, and some of whose lives were most 
pathetic and beautiful illustrations of this personal love 
for nature which I have tried to show as now coming 
into being for the first time in the history of man. 
Besides such spectacles as the lonesome researches of 
Jeremiah Horrox, for example, I scarcely know anything 
in history which yields such odd and instructive con- 
trasts as those glimpses of the scientific work which went 
on about the court of Charles II, and of what seems to 
have been the genuine interest of the monarch himself. 
In Pepys' Diary, for instance, under date of May nth, 
1663,1 find the entry: "Went home after a little dis- 



136 The English Novel 

course with Mr, Pierce the surgeon who tells me that 
.... the other day Dr. Clarke and he did dissect 
two bodies, a man and a woman, before the king, with 
which the king was highly pleased." Again, February 
1st, of the next year: " Thence to Whitehall, where in 
the Duke's chamber the King came and stayed an hour or 
two, laughing at Sir W. Petty .... and at Gresham 
College in general : Gresham College he mightily 
laughed at for spending time only in weighing of air and 
doing nothing else since they sat." On the 4th, he was 
at St. Paul's school and " Dr. Wilkins " is one of the 
"posers," Dr. Wilkins being John Wilkins, Bishop of 
Chester, whose name was well-known in mathematics 
and in physics. Under date of March ist, same year, 
the entry is : " To Gresham College where Mr. Hooke 
read a second very curious lecture about the late comet ; 
among other things proving very probably that this is 
the very same comet that appeared before in the year 
16 1 8, and that in such a time probably it will appear 
again, which is a very new opinion ; but all will be in 
print." And again on the 8th of August, 1666, I find 
an entry which is of considerable interest: "Discoursed 
with Mr. Hook about the nature of sounds, and he did 
make me understand the nature of musical sounds made 
by strings mighty prettily ; and told me that having 
come to a certain number of vibrations proper to make 
any tone, he is able to tell how many strokes a fly makes 
with her wings (those flies that hum in their flying) by 
the note that it answers to in music during their flying. 
That I suppose is a little too much refined ; but his dis- 
course in general of sound was mighty fine." 

On the other hand, I scarcely know how I could show 
the newness of this science thus entering the world, more 
vividly than by recording two other entries which I find 



And the Principle of its DeveIopme7it. 1 3 7 

in the midst of these scientific notes. One of these re- 
cords a charm for a burn, which Pepys thought so use- 
ful as to preserve. This is, in case one should be burned, 
to say immediately the following verse : 

" There came three angels out of the East ; 
One brought fire, the other brought frost — 
Out fire, in frost, 

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost." 

And the other is, under Sept. 29th, 1662, " To the 
King's Theatre, where we saw ' Midsummer's Night's 
Dream,' which I had never seen before, nor shall ever 
again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever 
I saw in my life." 

Indeed, if you should wish to see how recently we are 
out of the range of Aristotle, you have only to read the 
chapter on Human Anatomy, which occurs in the early 
part of dear old Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 
Here is an account of the body which makes curious 
reading for the modern biologist. I give a line here and 
there. The body is divided into parts containing or con- 
tained, and the parts contained are either humors or 
spirits. Of these humors there. are four: to wit, first, 
blood ; next, phlegm ; third, choler ; and fourth, melan- 
choly; and this is part of the description of each. 

" Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humor, . . . 
made of the most temperate parts of the chylus in the 
liver. . . . And from it spirits are first begotten in the 
heart. Phlegm is a cold and moist humor, begotten of 
the colder part of the, chylus in the liver. Choler is hot 
and dry, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus. 
Melancholy, cold and dry, ... is a bridle to the other 
two hot humors, blood and choler. These four humors 
have some analogy with the four elements and to the 



138 , The English Novel 

four ages in man." Having disposed thus of humors, 
we have this account of spirit or the other contained 
part of the body. " Spirit is a most subtle vapor, which 
is expressed from the blood, and the instrument of the 
soul to perform all his actions; a common tie or medium 
between the body and the soul, as some will have it ; or 
as Paracelsus — a fourth soul of itself" Proceeding to 
other parts of the body, here are the lungs. "The lungs 
is a thin spongy part like an ox-hoof . . . The instru- 
ment of voice ; . . . and next to the heart to express 
their thoughts by voice. That it is the instrument of 
voice is manifest in that no creature can speak . . . 
which wanteth these lights. It is besides the instrument 
of breathing ; and its office is to cool the heart by send- 
ing air into it by the venosal artery," &c., &c. 

This anatomy of Burton's includes the soul, and here 
are some particulars of it. "According to Aristotle, the 
soul is defined to be emtelecheia, . . . the perfection or 
first act of an organical body having power of life. . . . 
But many doubts arise about the essence, subject, seat, 
distinction and subordinate faculties of it. . . . Some 
make one soul ; . . . others, three. . . . The common 
division of the soul is into three principal faculties — 
vegetal, sensible and rational." The soul of man includes 
all three ; for the " sensible includes vegetal and rational 
both ; which are contained in it (saith Aristotle) tit trigo- 
nus in tetragono, as a triangle in a quadrangle. . . . Para- 
celsus will have four souls, adding to the three grand 
faculties a spiritual soul : which opinion of his Campa- 
nella in his book Dc Scnsu Rcrum much labors to de- 
monstrate and prove, because carcases bleed at the sight 
of the murderer; with many such arguments." These 
are not the wanderings of ignorance ; they represent the 
whole of human knowledge, and are an epitome made 



And the Principle of its Developrne^it. 1 39 

up from Aristotle, Galen, Vesalius, Fallopius, Wecker, 
Melancthon, Feruclius, Cicero, Pico Mirandola, Paracel- 
sus, Campanella, Taurellus, Philip, Flavius, Macrobius, 
Alhazen the Arabian, Vittellio, Roger Bacon, Baptista 
Porta, Cardan, Sambucus, Pliny, Avicenna, Lucretius, 
and such another list as makes one weary with the very 
names of authorities. 

These details of antique science brought face to face 
with the weighing of air at Gresham College, and with 
Sir Isaac Newton, represent with sufficient sharpness the 
change from the old reign of enmity between Nature and 
man, from the stern ideal of justice to the later reign of 
love which embraces in one direction, God, in another, 
fellow-man, in another, physical nature. 

Now, in these same sixteenth, seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries, in which we have seen science recover- 
ing itself after having been so long tongue-tied by autho- 
rity, a remarkably similar process goes on in the art of mu- 
sic. If, as we did in considering the progress of science, we 
now place ourselves at a standpoint from which we can 
precisely estimate that extension of man's personal rela- 
tion towards the unknown during these centuries, which 
resulted in modern music, we are met with a chain of 
strikingly similar facts and causes. The Greek music 
quite parallels Greek physical science. We have seen 
how, in the latter, a Greek philosopher would start off 
with a well-sounding proposition that all things origi- 
nated in moisture, or in fire, or in air, and we have seen 
how, instead of attacking moisture, fire and air, and of 
observing and classifying all the physical facts connected 
with them, the philosopher after awhile presents us with 
an amazing superstructure of pure speculation wholly 
disconnected from facts of any kind, physical or other- 
wise. Greek music offers us precisely the same net 



140 The English Novel 

outcome. It was enthusiastically studied, there were 
multitudes of performers upon the lyre, the flute, and so 
on, it was a part of common education, and the loftiest 
souls exerted their loftiest powers in theorizing upon it. 
For example, in Plato's Republic, Socrates earnestly con- 
demns every innovation upon music. His words are: 
" For any musical innovation is full of danger to the 

State Damon tells me, and I can quite believe 

him .... that when modes of music change, the fun- 
damental laws of the State always change with them ; " 
.... (therefore) " our guardians must lay the founda- 
tions of their fortress in music." Again, in Book III., 
during a discusion as to the kind of music to be per- 
mitted in our Republic, we have this kind of talk. Soc- 
rates asks : " Which are the harmonies expressive of 
sorrow?" It is replied, they are "the mixed Lydian 
and the full-toned or bass Lydian." 

" These must be banished Which are the soft 

or drinking harmonies?" 

" The Ionian and the Lydian." 

These, it appears, must also be banished. 

" Then the Dorian and the Phrygian appear to be the 
only ones which remain." 

Socrates " answered ; of the harmonies I know noth- 
ing ; but I want to have one warlike which will sound 
the word or note which a brave man utters in the hour 
of danger or stern resolve, or when his cause is failing 
. . . (and he) meets fortune with calmness and endur- 
ance ; and another to be used by him in times of peace 

and freedom of action These two harmonies I 

ask you to leave : the strain of necessity and the strain 
of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain 
of the fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of 
temperance; these, I say, leave." 



And the Principle of its Development. 141 

Siinmias draws a charming analogy in the Phcsdo 
between the relation of a beautiful and divine harmony 
to the lyre and that of the soul to the body ; Pythagoras 
dreams upon the music of the spheres ; everywhere 
the Greek is occupied with music, practical and theoreti- 
cal. I find a lively picture of the times where in Book 
VII. of the Republic, Socrates describes the activity of 
the musical searchers: "By heaven," he says, " 'tis as 
good as a play to hear them talking about their con- 
densed notes, as they call them ; they put their ears 
alongside of their neighbors .... one set of them 
declaring that they catch an intermediate note and have 
found the least interval which should be the unit of 
measurement; the others maintaining the opposite 
theory, that the two sounds have passed into the same, 
each party setting their ears before their understand- 
ing." 

And in this last clause we have a perfectly explicit 
statement of that lack of personal relation to facts which 
makes Greek music as meagre as Greek science. We 
found it the common fault of Greek scientific thought 
that it took more satisfaction in an ingenious argument 
upon a pseudo-fact than in a solid conclusion based 
upon plain observation and reasoning. So here, Socrates 
is satirizing even the poor attempt at observation made 
by these people, and sardonically accuses them of what 
is the very pride of modern science — namely, of setting 
their ears before their understanding, — that is, of rigor- 
ously observing the facts before reasoning upon them. 

At any rate, in spite of all this beautiful and compre- 
hensive talk of harmony and the like, the fact is clear, 
that the Greek had no harmony worth the name ; he 
knew nothing but the crude concords of the octave, the 
fourth and the fifth; moreover, his melody was equally 



142 The English Novel 

meagre ; and altogether his ultimate flight in music was 
where voices of men and women sang, accompanied in 
unison or octave by the lyre, the flute and the like. 

And if we consider the state of music after the passing 
away of the Greek cultus up to the fifteenth century, we 
have much the same story to tell as was just now told of 
mediaeval science. For a time the world's stock of tunes 
is practically comprised in the melodies collected by 
Gregory, known as the Gregorian Chant. Presently the 
system of polyphonic music arises, in which several 
voices sing different melodies so arranged as not to jar 
with each other. But when we now come down to the 
sixteenth century, we find a wonderful new activity in 
music accompanying that in science. Luther in Ger- 
many, Gondimel in France, push forward the song: in 
Spain, Salinas of Salamanca, studies ancient music for 
thirty years, and finally arrives at the conclusion that the 
Greek had no instrumental music, and that all their 
melody was originally derived from the order of syllables 
in verse. In Italy, Montaverde announces what were 
called his " new discords," and the beautiful maestro, 
Palestrina, writes compositions in several parts, which 
are at once noble, simple and devout. England at this 
time is filled with music ; and by the end of the sixteenth 
century the whole land is a-warble with the madrigals 
and part-compositions of Weelkes, Wilbye, John Milton, 
Sr., and the famous Dr. John Bull, together with those 
of Tye, Tallis, Morley, Orlando Gibbons, and hundreds 
more. But as yet modern music is not. There is no 
orchestra ; Queen Elizabeth's dinner-music is mainly 
drums and trumpets. It is not until the middle of the 
seventeenth century that Jenkins and Purcell begin to 
write sonatas for a small number of violins with organ 
accompaniment. 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 43 

A curious note of the tendency towards instrumental 
music at this time, however, is found in the fact that 
people begin to care so little for the words of songs as to 
prefer them in a foreign language. Henry Lawes, one 
of the most famous musicians of the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, he who suggested Milton's Comus and set 
it to music, endeavored to rebuke this affectation, as he 
supposed it, by a cruel joke : he wrote a song, of which 
the words were nothing more than the index of an old 
volume of musical compositions, and had it sung amidst 
great applause. It must have been in the same course 
of feeling that Waller — several of whose poems had 
been set to music by Lawes — addressed to him the 
following stanza : 

" Let those who only warble long, 
And gargle in their throat a song, 
Content themselves with do, re, mi ; 
Let words of sense be set by thee." 

And so through Allegri, Stradella, the Scarlattis and a 
thousand singers, players and composers we come to the 
year 1685 in which both Bach and Handel were born. 
Here we are fairly in the face of modern music. What 
then is modern music ? Music at this time bounds for- 
ward in the joy of an infinitely developable principle. 
What is this principle ? In its last analysis it is what 
has now come to be called Harmony, or more specially 
Tonality. According to the modern musical feeling 
when any tone is heard it is heard in its relation to some 
other tone which from one circumstance or another may 
have been taken as a basis of such relations. By a long 
course of putting our ears before our understanding, — 
a course carried on by all those early musicians whose 
names I have mentioned, each contributing some new 



144 ^^^^ English Novel 

relation between tones which his ear had discovered, we 
have finally been able to generalize these relations in 
such a way as to make a complete system of tonality 
in which every possible tone brings to our ear an im- 
pression dependent on the tone or tones in connection 
with which it is heard. As the Pupil at Sais ere long 
began to see nothing alone, so we hear nothing alone- 
You have only to remember that the singer now-a-days 
must always have the piano accompaniment in order to 
satisfy our demand for harmony, that we never hear any 
unmixed melody in set music, in order to see how com- 
pletely harmony reigns in our music, instead of bare 
melody. We may then broadly differentiate the modern 
music which begins at the same time with modern science, 
from all precedent music, as Harmony contrasted with 
Melody. To this we must add the idea of instrumental 
harmony, of that vast extension of harmonies rendered 
possible by the great development of orchestral instru- 
ments whose compass greatly exceeds that of the human 
voice, which formerly limited all musical energy. 

It is tempting, here, to push the theory of personality 
into fanciful extremes. You have seen how the long 
development of melody — melody being here the individ- 
ual — receives a great extension in the polyphonic music, 
when individual melodies move along side by side 
without jostling : and how at length the whole suddenly 
bursts into the highest type of social development, where 
the melody is at once united with the harmony in the 
most intimate way, yet never loses its individuality ; 
where the melody would seem to maintain towards the 
harmony almost the ideal relation of our finite person- 
ality, to the Infinite personality ; at once autonomous as 
finite, and yet contained in, and rapturously united with 
the mfinite. 



And the Principle of its Development, 145 

But without pressing the matter, it now seems clear 
from our sketch that just as in the 17th century the 
spirit of man has opened up for the first time a perfectly 
clear and personal relation with physical nature and has 
thus achieved modern science with Sir Isaac Newton, so 
in this 17th century, the spirit of man opens up a new 
relation to the infinite, to the unknown, and achieves 
modern music in John Sebastian Bach. 

Nor need I waste time in defending this category in 
which I placed music, as a relation to the Unknown. If 
you collect all the expressions of poets and philosophers 
upon music, you will find them converging upon this 
idea. No one will think Thomas Carlyle sentimental ; 
yet it is he who says " music which leads us to the verge 
of the infinite, and lets us gaze on that." 

And so finally, with the first English novel of Rich- 
ardson in 1739-40, we have completed our glance at the 
simultaneous birth of modern science, modern music, 
and the modern novel. 

And we are now prepared to carry forward our third 
and fourth lines of thought together : which were to 
show the development of the novel from the Greek 
Drama, and to illustrate the whole of the principles now 
advanced, with some special studies of the modern novel. 
These two lines will mutually support each other, and 
will emerge concurrently, as we now go on to study the 
life and works of that George Eliot, who has so recently 
solved the scientific problem which made her life one of 
the most pathetic and instructive in human history. 
7 



146 The English Novel 



VII. 



Our custom, in these studies, of passing at the earliest 
possible moment from the abstract to the concrete, and 
of verifying theory by actual experiment, arrives at a sort 
of beautiful climax and apotheosis as we proceed from the 
abstract principles formulated in the last six lectures, to 
their exquisite concrete and verification in George Eliot. 

At our last meeting we saw that during a period of time 
which we fix to a point by sweeping the mind from the' 
sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, the 
growing personality of man sent out three new processes, 
which have remarkably changed and enlarged the whole 
form of our individual and social structure. 

I have found it highly useful in more than one con- 
nection to acquire a clear notion of these three processes 
by referring them all to a common physical concept of 
direction. For example : we may with profit construct 
a diagram in which it shall appear that at the renaissance 
period mentioned the three great and distinctive new 
personal relations which man established for himself 
were (i) a relation upward, 

unknown (Music) 

A 

Personality< " > - Fellow-man. (The Novel) 



•INature. (Physical Science.) 
towards the unknown, (2) a relation on our own level, a 



ijtd the Pnnciple of its Development. 147 

relation towards our equal, — that is towards our fellow 
man, and (3) a relation towards our inferior, — in the 
sense that the world is for man's use, is made for man, — 
that is, towards physical nature. We have seen how 
from the beginning of man's history these three relations 
did not acquire the vividness and energy of personal re- 
lations, nor any fixed or developable existence at all 
until the period mentioned. 

I cannot help expressing earnest regret that the limits 
of my present subject have not allowed me to give any 
development whatever to this conception of the actual 
significance of the Renaissance as a significance which 
crystallizing into Music, the Novel, and Science, has left 
us those as the solid residuum of that movement; and it 
is not a mere sentimental generalization but a hard, 
scientific and unifiable fact that music is the distinctive 
form in which man's new relation to what is above him 
has expressed itself; the novel is the distinctive form in 
which man's new personal relation to his fellow-man has 
expressed itself; and science is the distinctive form in 
which man's new personal relation to nature has expressed 
itself 

I am perfectly well aware, for instance, that when one 
thinks of the Italian Opera with its banalities and fleshly 
frenzies ; or when one thinks of the small, low, unmanly 
sensual lives which so many musicians have led under 
our eyes ; one may well feel inclined to dispute this cate- 
gory to which I have assigned music, and to question 
whether music does belong to this wholly religious 
sphere. I long to be able to remind such questioners of 
the historic fact that music has been brought into the 
church as the mouthpiece of our worship, not by the sen- 
timental people but by the sternest reformers and the 
most untheoretical and hard-handed workers : I long to 



148 The English Novel 

remind them how it is the same Luther who would meet 

his accusers though ten thousand devils backed them, 

that cares most assiduously for the hymns of the church, 

makes them, sings them : how it is the same Puritan who 

fights winter and hunger and the savage, that is noted 

for his sweet songs, and must have his periodic opening 

of the musical avenue up towards the great God : or, 

passing far back to the times before music was music, 

and so making the case stronger, I long to remind them 

of a single line in a letter from Pliny the younger to 

Trajan in the year 1 10, which puts before me a dewy 

morning picture of music and Christian devotion that 

haunts my imagination — a line in which Pliny mentions 

some people who were in the habit of "meeting on a 

certain day before daylight and singing a hymn to Christ 

as to a God": or how in the fourth century the very 

Ambrosian chant which preceded the Gregorian chant is 

due to the fact that the good Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, 

casting about for solace, collects a number of psalm tunes 

and hymns and appoints them to be sung for the express 

purpose of consoling his people in their afflictions: and 

coming down to the birth of modern music, I long to 

remind these questioners of the noble and simple devout- 

ness which Palestrina brings into the church worship 

with his music; of the perfect calm creative life of John 

Sebastian Bach whose music is so compact of devotion 

as to have inspired the well-known declaration that 

wherever it is played, it makes that place a church ; and 

finally I long to remind them how essential a part of 

every modern church the organ-loft and the choir have 

come to be — and in full view of the terrible mistakes which 

these often make, of the screechy Italian opera music 

which one hears floating from this or that church on a 

Sunday, of the wholly undevout organ music with which 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 49 

the unfortunate flippant-minded organist often sends us 
forth — to declare that music is yet, as we have seen, anew 
art, that we have not really learned the uses of it, much 
less the scope of it ; that indeed not all of us have even 
yet acquired the physical capacity or ear for it, — and that 
finally we are at the very threshold of those sweet appli- 
cations we may hereafter make of that awful and myste- 
rious power in music to take up our yearnings towards the 
infinite at the point where words and all articulate utter- 
ance fail, and bear them onward often to something like 
a satisfactory nearness to their divine object. 

But all this must be left aside, and we must now pass 
on to consider that remarkable writer who for something 
more than twenty years past has been chaining the 
attention of our English world purely by virtue of her 
extraordinary endowment as to all three of these rela- 
tions which I have here sketched in diagram — these 
relations to the growing personality of man to that 
which is above him, or the unknown — to that which is 
in his level, or his fellow-man ; and to that which is 
beneath him, or nature — which have resulted respect- 
ively in music, the novel, and science. 

If I could be allowed to construct a final text and 
summary of all the principles which have been announced 
in the preceding lectures, I could make none more com- 
plete than is furnished me by two English women who 
have recently been among us, and who, in the quietest 
way have each made an epoch, not only in literature but in 
life. These two women are Elizabeth Barrett Browning 
and George Eliot ; and although our studies now lie 
more immediately with the latter, I shall find a frequent 
delight as we go on in comparing her printed words 
with those of Mrs. Browning, and in showing through 
what diverse forms of personality — so diverse as to be 



150 The English Novel 

often really complementary to each other — these two 
have illustrated the doctrines I have hitherto expounded- 

In beginning to get some clear view of the actual living 
personality which I have hitherto designated as George 
Eliot, one is immediately struck with the fact that it has 
enjoyed more of what Jack Falstaff would call a com- 
modity of good names than falls to the lot of most 
mortals. As one rehearses these names it is curious also 
to reflect what a different train of associations each one 
suecests. It is hard to believe that Marian Evans, Amos 
Barton (for when the editor of Blackwood's was corres- 
ponding with her about her first unsigned manuscript, 
which was entitled, The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Avios 
Barton, I find him addressing her as " My dear Amos"), 
George Eliot, Mrs, Lewes, and Mrs. Cross are one and 
the same person. Amid all these appellations I find 
myself most strongly attracted towards that of George 
Eliot. This was the name which she chose for herself; it 
was under this name that she made her great successes; 
it was by this name that she endeared herself to all who 
love great and faithful work ; and surely — if one may 
paraphrase Poe — the angels call her George Eliot. Since 
therefore we are mainly interested in Marian Evans, or 
Mrs. Lewes, or Mrs. Cross, just in so far as they bear 
intimate relations to George Eliot, I find myself drawn, 
in placing before you such sketch as I have been able 
to make of this remarkable personage, to begin with 
some account of the birth of the specific George Eliot, 
and having acquired a view of the circumstances attend- 
ing that event, to look backward and forward from that 
as a central point at the origin and life of Marian Evans 
on the one hand, and of Mrs. Lewes and Mrs. Cross on 
the other. 

On a certain night in the autumn of 1856, the editor 



Aiid the Principle of its Development. 1 5 1 

of Blackivood' s Magazine, was seated in an apartment 
of his own house, reading a manuscript which he had 
lately received from London, called Tlie Sad Fortunes of 
the Rev. Amos Barton. About 1 1 o'clock in the evening 
Thackeray, who had been staying with him and had 
been out to dinner, entered the room, and the editor 
remarked, " Do you know I think I have lighted upon a 
new author who is uncommonly like a first-class pas- 
senger ?" 

Hereupon he read to Thackeray a passage from the 
manuscript which he held in his hand. We are able to 
identify this passage, and it seems interesting to repro- 
duce it here, not only as a specimen of the kind of 
matter which was particularly striking to the editor of a 
great magazine twenty-five years ago, but as about the 
first tangible utterance of the real George Eliot. The 
passage occurs early in the second chapter of the story. 
In the first chapter we have had some description of the 
old church and the existing society in Shepperton 
"twenty-five years ago," which dating from 1856 would 
show us that village about the year 1830-31. In the 
second chapter we are immediately introduced to the 
Rev. Amos Barton, and the page or two which our 
editor read to Thackeray was this : 

Look at him as he winds through the little churchyard ! The 
silver hght that falls aslant on church and tomb, enables you to 
see his slim black figure, made all the slimmer by tight pantaloons. 
He walks with a quick step, and is now rapping with sharp deci- 
sion at the vicarage door. It is opened without delay by the 
nurse, cook, and housemaid, all at once — that is to say, by the 
robust maid-of-all work, Nanny ; and as Mr. Barton hangs up his 
hat in the passage, you see that a narrow face of no particular 
complexion — even the small-pox that has attacked it seems to 
have been of a mongrel, indefinite kind -with features of no par- 
ticular shape, and an eye of no particular expression, is sur- 



152 The English Novel 

mounted by a slope of baldness gently rising from brow to crown. 
You judge him, rightly, to be about forty. The house is quiet, for 
it is half-past ten, and the children have long been gone to bed. 
He opens the sitting-room door, but instead of seeing his wife, as 
he expected, stitching with the nimblest of fingers by the light of 
one candle, he finds her dispensing with the light of a candle al- 
together. She is softly pacing up and down by the red fire-light, 
holding in her arms little Walter, the year-old baby, who looks 
over her shoulder with large wide-open eyes, while the patient 
mother pats his back with her soft hand, and glances with a sigh 
at the heap of large and small stockings lying unmended on the 
table. 

She was a lovely woman — Mrs. Amos Barton; a large, fair, 
gentle Madonna, with thick, close chestnut curls beside her well 
rounded cheeks, and with large, tender, short-sighted eyes. The 
flowing line of her tall figure made the limpest dress look graceful, 
and her old frayed black silk seemed to repose on her bust and 
limbs with a placid elegance and sense of distinction, in strong 
contrast with the uneasy sense of being no fit, that seemed to ex- 
press itself in the rustling of Mrs, Farquhar's gros de Naples. The 
caps she wore would have been pronounced, when off her head, 
utterly heavy and hideous — for in those days even fashionable 
caps were large and floppy ; but surmounting her long, arched 
neck, and mingling their borders of cheap lace and ribbon with 
her chestnut curls, they seemed miracles of successful millinery. 
Among strangers she was shy and tremulous as a girl of fifteen ; 
she blushed crimson if any one appealed to her opinion ; yet that 
tall, graceful, substantial presence was so imposing in its mildness, 
that men spoke to her with an agreeable sensation of timidity. . . . 
I venture to say Mrs. Barton would never have grown half so 
angelic if she had married the man you would perhaps have had 
in your eye for her — a inan with sufficient income and abundant 
personal eclat. Besides, Amos was an affectionate husband, and, 
in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure. 

*-55-***** ****** 

" I wish we could do without borrowing money, and yet I don't 
see how we can. Poor Fred must have some new shoes ; I 
couldn't let him go to Mrs. Bond's yesterday because his toes 
were peeping out, dear child ; and I can't let him walk anywhere 
except in the garden. He must have a pair before Sunday. 
Really, boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Every- 



Ajid the Principle of its Development. 153 

thing else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like 
new ; but there's no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than 
they are." 

Mrs. Barton was playfully undervaluing her skill in metamor- 
phosing boots and shoes. She had at that moment on her feet a 
pair of slippers which had long ago lived through the prunella 
phase of their existence, and were now running a respectable 
career as black silk slippers, having been neatly covered with that 
material by Mrs. Barton's own neat fingers. 

Wonderful fingers those ! they were never empty ; for if she 
went to spend a few hours with a friendly parishioner, out came 
her thimble and a piece of calico or muslin, which before she left, 
had become a mysterious little garment with all sorts of hemmed 
ins and outs. She was even trying to pei'suade her husband to 
leave off tight pantaloons ; because if he would wear the ordinary 
gun-cases, she knew she could make them so well that no one 
would suspect the tailor. 

But by this time Mr. Barton has finished his pipe, the candle 
begins to burn low, and Mrs. Barton goes to see if Nanny has 
succeeded in lulling Walter to sleep. Nanny is that moment put- 
ting him in the little cot by his mother's bedside ; the head with 
its thin wavelets of brown hair, indents the little pillow ; and a 
tiny, waxen, dimpled fist hides the rosy hps, for baby is given to 
the infantine peccadillo of thumb-sucking. So Nanny could now 
join in the short evening prayer, and all go to bed. Mrs. Barton 
carried up stairs the remainder of her heap of stockings, and laid 
them on a table close to her bedside, where also she placed a warm 
shawl, removing her candle, before she put it out, to a tin socket 
fixed at the head of her bed. Her body was weary, but her heart 
was not heavy, in spite of Mr. Woods the butcher, and the transi- 
tory nature of shoe-leather ; for her heart so overflowed with love, 
she felt sure she was near a fountain of love that would care for 
her husband and babes better than she could foresee ; so she was 
soon asleep. But about half-past five o'clock in the morning, if 
there were any angels watching round her bed — and angels might 
be glad of such an office— they saw Mrs. Barton rise up quietly, 
careful not to disturb the slumbering Amos, who was snoring the 
snore of the just ; light her candle, prop herself upright with the 
pillows, throw the warm shawl round her shoulders, and renew 
her attack on the heap of undarned stockings. She darned away 
until she heard Nanny stirring, and then drowsiness came with 

7* 



154 1^^^ English Novel 

the dawn ; the candle was put out, and she sank into a doze. But 
at nine o'clock she was at the breakfast-table busy cutting bread 
and butter for five hungry mouths, while Nanny, baby on one 
arm, in rosy cheeks, fat neck, and night-gown, brought in a jug of 
hot milk and water. 

Although Thackeray was not enthusiastic, the editor 
maintained his opinion and wrote the author that the 
manuscript was " worthy the honors of print and pay," 
addressing the author as " My dear Amos." Considera- 
ble correspondence followed in which the editor was free 
in venturing criticisms. The author had offered this 
as the first of a series to be called " Scenes from Clerical 
Life ;'' but no others of the series were yet written and 
the editor was naturally desirous to see more of them 
before printing the first. This appears to have made 
the author extremelv timid, and for a time there was 
doubt whether it was worth while to write the remaining 
stories. For the author's encouragement, therefore, it 
was determined to print the first story without waiting 
to see the others ; and accordingly in Blackwood's Maga- 
zine for January, 1857, the story of Ainos Barton was 
printed. 

This stimulus appears to have had its effect; and 
after the January number, each succeeding issue of 
Black-wood's Magazine contained an instalment of the 
series known as Scenes of Clerical Life, until it was 
concluded in the number for November, 1857 ; the whole 
series embracing the three stories of Amos Barton, Mr. 
Gilfl's Love-Story and Janet's Repentance. It was only 
while the second of these — Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story — was 
appearing in the Magazine that our George Eliot was 
born ; for it was at this time that the editor of the Maga- 
zine was instructed to call the author by that name. 

The hold which these three stories immediately took 



And the Principle of its Developinent. 1 5 5 

upon all thinking people was remarkable. In January, 
1 858, that is two months after the last instalment of Janet's 
Repentance — I find Charles Dickens writing this letter : 

" My dear Longford — 

" Will you — by such roundabout ways and methods as may 
present themselves — convey this note of thanks to the author of 
' Scenes of Clerical Life,' whose two first stories I can never say 
enough of, I think them so truly admirable. But, if those two 
volumes or a part of them, were not written by a woman — then 
should I begin to believe that I am a woman myself. 

Faithfully Yours Always, 

Charles Dickens." 

It is especially notable to find that the editor of the 
Magazine himself completely abandoned all those con- 
servative habits of the prudent editor which have arisen 
from a thousand experiences of the rapid failures of this 
and that new contributor who seemed at first sure to 
sweep the world, and which always teach every conduc- 
tor of a great magazine at an early stage of his career to 
be extremely guarded in his expressions to new writers 
however promising they may appear. This traditional 
guardedness seems to have been completely swept away 
by these stories ; Mr. Blackwood writes letter after let- 
ter to George Eliot, full of expressions that the hack- 
neyed editor would ordinarily consider extravagant : and 
finally in a letter concerning the publication in book- 
form of the magazine-stories : " You will recollect . . 
, . . my impression was that the series had not lasted 
long enough in the Magazine to give you a hold on the 
general public, although long enough to make your 
literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases, a very 
long titne often elapses between the two stages of repu- 
tation — the literary and the public. Your progress will 
be snrc, if not so quick as we could wish." 



156 The English Novel 

Before examining these stories, it seems a pleasant 
method of pursuing our account of the George Eliot 
thus introduced, to go forward a little to the time when 
a curious and amusing circumstance resulted in revealing 
her actual name and sex. Thus we seem to be making 
this lovely star rise before us historically as it rose before 
the world, I have just spoken of the literary interest 
which the stories excited in Mr. Blackwood. The per- 
sonal interest appears to have been as great, and he was 
at first very anxious to make the acquaintance of his new 
contributor in the flesh. He was given to understand, 
however, that the contributor wished to remain obscure, 
for the present, and he forbore further inquiries with 
scrupulous delicacy. It happened, however, that pres- 
ently the authorship of Scenes of Clerical Life was claimed 
for another person, and the claim soon assumed con- 
siderable proportions. Certain residents about Nuneaton, 
in Warwickshire — where in point of fact George Eliot 
had been born and brought up — felt sure they recognized 
in the stories of Amos Barton and Mr. Gilfil portraits of 
people who had actually lived in that country, and began 
to inquire what member of their community could have 
painted these portraits. Presently, while the stories were 
running in the magazine, a newspaper published in the 
Isle of Man boldly announced that a certain Mr. Liggins, 
of Nuneaton, was their author. The only claim to 
literaiy power Mr. Liggins had, it seems, lay in the cir- 
cumstance that he had run through a fortune at Cam- 
bridge ; and in fact he himself denied the charge at first. 
But immediately upon the heels of Scenes of Clerical 
Life appeared Adam Bede, and the honor of that great 
work was so seductive that for some reason or other — 
whether because the reiteration of his friends had per- 
suaded him that he actually did write the works, in some 



A7id the Principle of its Developmeiit. 1 5 7 

such way as it is said that a man may tell a he so often 
and long that he will finally come to believe it himself, 
or for whatever other reason — it seems that Mr. Liggins 
so far compromised himself that, without active denial 
by him, a friendly clergyman down in Warwickshire sent 
a letter to the Times, formally announcing Liggins as the 
author of Scenes of Clerical Life and of Adam Bede. 
Hereupon appeared a challenge from the still mythical 
George Eliot, inviting Mr. Liggins to make a fair test 
of his capacity by writing a chapter or two in the style 
of the disputed works. The Blackwoods were thickly 
besieged with letters from various persons earnestly 
assuring them that Liggins was the author. To add to 
the complications, it was given out that Liggins was 
poor, so that many earnest persons wrote to the Black- 
woods declaring that so great a genius ought not to be 
hampered by want, and liberally offering their purses to 
place him in such condition that he might write without 
being handicapped by care. It seems to have been par- 
ticularly troublesome to the Blackwoods to prevent 
money from being misapplied in this way — for they were 
satisfied that Liggins was not the author ; and they were 
made all the more careful by some previous experiences 
of a similar kind ; and in one of Blackwood's letters to 
George Eliot he comically exclaims that " some years 
ago a rascal nearly succeeded in marrying a girl with 
money on the strength of being the author of a series 
of articles in the Magazine." 

Thus what with the public controversy between the 
Liggins and anti-Liggins parties— for many persons 
appear to have remained firmly persuaded that Liggins 
was the true author — and what with the more legiti- 
mate stimulus excited by the confirmatory excellence of 
Adam Bede, the public curiosity was thoroughly aroused, 



158 The English Novel 

so that even before The Mill on the Floss appeared in 
i860, it had become pretty generally known who " George 
Eliot" was. 

Here, then, would seem to be a fitting point for us 
to pause a moment and endeavor to construct for our- 
selves some definite figure of the real flesh-and-blood 
creature who, up to this time, had remained the mere 
literary abstraction called George Eliot. 

It appeared that her real name was Marian Evans, and 
that she was the daughter of a respectable land surveyor, 
who had married and settled at Nuneaton, in Warwick- 
shire. Here she was born in November, 1820; and it 
seems pleasant to reflect that but a few miles off in the 
same county of Warwickshire was the birthplace of 
Shakspeare, whose place among male writers seems 
more nearly filled by Marian Evans or George Eliot 
among female writers than by any other woman, so that 
we have the greatest English man and the greatest 
English woman born, though two centuries and a half 
apart in time, but a few miles apart in space. 

Here, among the same thick hedges and green fields 
of the fair English Midlands with which Shakspeare was 
familiar, Marian Evans lived for the first large part of 
her life. Perhaps a more quiet, uneventful existence as 
to external happenings could hardly be imagined ; and 
that Marian Evans was among the quietest of the quiet 
residents there seems cunningly enough indicated if we 
remember that when the good people of Nuneaton first 
began to suspect that some resident of that region had 
been taking their portraits in Scenes of Clerical Life, 
none seemed to think for a moment of a certain Marian 
Evans as possibly connected with the matter ; and popu- 
lar suspicion, after canvassing the whole ground, was 
able to find only one person — to wit, the Mr. Liggins 



A7id the Principle of its Development. 1 59 

just referred to — who seemed at all competent to such 
work. 

Of these demure, reserved, uneventful years of country- 
existence it is, of course, impossible to lay before you 
any record ; no life of George Eliot has yet been given 
to the public. Sometime ago, however, I happened 
upon a letter of Marian Evans published in an English 
paper, in which she refers with so much particularity to 
this portion of her life, that I do not know how we 
could gain a more vivid and authentic view thereof than 
by quoting it here. Specifically, the letter relates to a 
controversy that had sprung up as to who was the 
original of the character of Dinah Morris — that beauti- 
ful Dinah Morris, you will remember in Adam Bede 
— solemn, fragile, strong Dinah Morris, the woman- 
preacher whom I find haunting my imagination in 
strange but entrancing unions of the most diverse forms, 
as if, for instance, a snow-drop could also be St. Paul, 
as if a kiss could be a gospel, as if a lovely phrase of 
Chopin's most inward music should become suddenly 
an Apocalypse — that rare, pure and strange Dinah Morris 
who would alone consecrate English literature if it had 
yielded no other gift to man. It would seem that 
possibly a dim suggestion of such a character may have 
been due to a certain aunt of hers, Elizabeth Evans, whom 
Marian had met in her girlhood; but this suggestion 
was all ; and the letter shows us clearly that the charac 
ter of Dinah Morris was almost an entire creation. The 
letter is as follows : 

Holly Lodge, Oct, 7, 1859, 
Dear Sara: 

I should like, while the subject is vividly present 
with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, what 
I knew of my aunt, Ehzabeth Evans, My father, you know, lived 



i6o The English Novel 

in Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Stafford- 
shire first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he mar- 
ried my mother. There was hardly any intercourse between my 
father's family, resident in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our 
family — few and far between visits of (to my childish feelings) 
strange uncles and aunts and cousins from my father's far-off na- 
tive county, and once a journey of my own, as a little child, with 
my father and mother, to see my uncle Wilham, a rich builder, in 
Staffordshire — but not my uncle and aunt Samuel, so far as I can 
recall the dim outline of things — are what I remember of northerly 
relations in my childhood. 

But when I was seventeen or more — after my sister was married 
and I was mistress of the house — my father took a journey into 
Derbyshire, in which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who 
were very poor, and lived in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he 
found my aunt in a very delicate state of health after a serious ill- 
ness, and, to do her bodily good, he persuaded her to return with 
him, telling her that I should be very, very happy to have her with 
me for a few weeks. I was then strongly under the influence of 
Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavoring to shape this anoma- 
lous English-Christian life of ours into some consistency with the 
spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament. 

I was delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard her 
spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of 
exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that we should 
find sympathy between us. She was then an old woman — above 
sixty — and, I believe, had for a good many years given up preach- 
ing. A tiny little woman, with bright, small dark eyes, and hair 
that had been black, I imagine, but was now gray — a pretty wo- 
man in her youth, but of a totally different physical type from 
Dinah. The difference — as you will believe — was not simply physi- 
cal ; no difference is. She was a woman of strong natural excit- 
ability, which, I know, from the description I have heard my father 
and half-sister give, prevented her from the exercise of discretion 
under the promptings of her zeal. But this vehemence was now 
subdued by age and sickness ; she was very gentle and quiet in 
her manners — very loving — and (what she must have been from 
the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and 
love of man were fused together. There was nothing highly dis- 
tinctive in her religious conversation. I had had much intercourse 
with pious Dissenters before. The only freshness I found in our 



Ajtd the Principle of its Development. i6i 

talk, came from the fact that she had been the greater part of her 
hfe a Wesleyan ; and though she left the society when women were 
no longer allowed to preach, and joined the new Wesleyans, she 
retained the character of thought that belongs to the genuine old 
Wesleyan. I had never talked with a Wesleyan before, and we 
used to have little debates about predestination, for I was then a 
strong Calvinist. Here her superiority came out, and I remember 
now, with loving admiration, one thing which at the time I disap- 
proved. It was not strictly a consequence of her Arminian belief, 
and at first sight might seem opposed to it, — yet it came from the 
spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of Arminianism. When 
my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with us a fortnight 
or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, once 
greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had 
taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. " But I 
hope the good man's in heaven for all that," said my uncle. " Oh, 
yes," said my aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, 
" Mr. A.'s in heaven — that's sure." This was at the time an of- 
fence to my stern, ascetic, hard views — how beautiful it is to me now ! 

As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things 
of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her 
telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious 
woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, 
and gone with her to execution ; and one or two accounts of sup- 
posed miracles in which she believed — among the rest, the face 
with the crown of thorns seen in the glass. In her account of the 
prison scenes, I remember no word she uttered — I only remember 
her tone and manner, and the deep feeling 1 had under the recital. 
Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe — or told me nothing — but 
that she was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. 
The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead germ, 
apparently — till time had placed in my mind a nidus in which it 
could fructify ; it then turned out to be the germ of " Adam Bede." 

I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and night 
with my father in the Wirksworth cottage sleeping with my aunt, 
I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former 
time : I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And 
once again she came with my uncle to see me — when my father 
and I were living at Foleshill ; then there was some pain, for I had 
given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of 
free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This 



1 62 The English Novel 

is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my 
dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested 
Dinah ; but it is not possible you should see as I do how entirely 
her individuality differed from Dinah's. How curious it seemed to 
me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers and speeches 
were copied — when they were written with hot tears, as they surged 
up in my own mind ! 

As to my indebtedness to facts of local and personal history of 
a small kind, connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire — you 
may imagine of what kind that is when I tell you that I never re- 
mained in either of those counties more than a few days together, 
and of only two such visits have I more than a shadowy, inter- 
rupted recollection. The details which I knew as facts, and have 
made use of for my picture, were gathered from such imperfect al- 
lusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional 
talk about old times. 

As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they did 
say, that Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt — that is the vague, 
easily satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of 
portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women without 
pretension to enlightened discrimination should think a generic re- 
semblance constitutes a portrait, when we see the great public so 
accustomed to be delighted with misrepresentations of life and 
character, which they accept as representations, that they are 
scandalized when art makes a nearer approach to truth. 

Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you 
— but I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years 
"AdamBede" and all that concerns it may have become a dim 
portion of the past, and I may not be able to recall so much of the 
truth as I have now told you. 

Once more, thanks, dear Sara. 

Ever your loving 

Marian. 

It is easy to gather from this letter that whilst the ex- 
istence of Marian Evans was calm enough externally, 
her inner life was full of stirring events — of the most 
stirring events, in fact which can agitate the human soul 
for it is evident that she had passed along some quite op- 
posite phases of religious belief In 185 1, after a visit 



And the Principle of its Develop7ne7it. 163 

to the continent, she goes — where all EngHsh writers 
seem to drift by some natural magic — to London, and 
fixes her residence there. It is curious enough that with 
all her clearness of judgment she works here for five 
years, apparently without having perceived the vocation 
for which her whole natural and acquired outfit had so 
remarkably prepared her. We find her translating 
Spinoza's Ethics; not only translating but publishing 
Feuerbach's Essence of Cliristianity and Strauss's Life of 
fesus. ■ She contributes learned essays to the Westminster 
Review; it is not until the year 1856, when she is thirty- 
six years old that her first slight magazine story is sent 
to Blackwood's ; and even after his first commendations 
her timidity and uncertainty as to whether she could 
succeed in story-writing are so great that she almost re- 
solved to give it up. I should regard it as mournful, if 
I could think it religious to regard anything as mournful 
which has happened and is not revocable, that upon 
coming to London Marian Evans fell among a group of 
persons represented by George Henry Lewes. If one 
could have been her spiritual physician at this time one 
certainly would have prescribed for her some of those 
warm influences which dissipate doubt by exposing it to 
the fierce elemental heats of love, of active charity. 
One would have prescribed for her the very remedy she 
herself has so wisely commended in Janet's Repentance. 

" No wonder the sick room and the lazaretto have so often been 
a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt — a place of repose 
for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about v/hich all 
creeds and philosophers are of one mind ; here, at least, the con- 
science will not be dogged by adverse theory ; here you may be- 
gin to act without settling one preliminary question. To moisten 
the sufferer's parched lips through the night-watches, to bear up 
the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want 
that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of tke hand 



164 The English Novel 

or beseeching glance of the eye — these are offices that demand no 
self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weigh- 
ing of consequences Within the four walls where the stare and glare 
of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued — where a hu- 
man being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow, 
the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness 
and simplicity ; bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, 
passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it.'' 

Or one might have prescribed for her America where 
the knottiest social and moral problems disappear unac- 
countably before a certain new energy of individual growth 
which is continually conquering new points of view from 
which to regard the world. 

At the time to v/hich we have now brought her history, 
Marian Evans would seem to have been a singularly en- 
gaging person. She was small in stature and her face 
was what would be called plain here ; but she was widely 
read, master of several languages, a good talker and lis- 
tener : and beyond all, every current of testimony runs 
towards a certain intensity and loving fire which pervaded 
her and which endowed her with irresistible magnetic at- 
traction for all sensitive souls that came near her. Her 
love for home matters, and for the spot of earth where 
she had been born, her gentle affection for animals; how 
the Bible and Thomas a Kempiswere her favorite books, 
these and a thousand womanly traits I hope to bring out 
as we study some of her greater works, — for with all her 
reputed reserve I find scarcely any writer so sincerely 
communicative and so frankly desirous of sympathy on 
the part of her reader as George Eliot. In the next 
article I shall ask leave to present you with some pictures 
of the stage at which English novel- writing has arrived 
under the recent hands of Scott, Thackeray and Dickens 
when George Eliot is timidly offering her first manuscript 
to Blackwood's ; and I shall then offer some quotations 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 65 

from these first three stories —particularly ixom Jand s Re- 
pentance which seems altogether the most important of the 
three — and shall attempt to show distinctly what were the 
main new features of wit, of humor, of doctrine, and of 
method which were thus introduced into literature, espe- 
cially in connection with similar features which about this 
same time were being imparted by Mrs. Browning. 

Meantime, let me conclude by asking you to fix your 
attention for a moment on this figure of Milly, sweet 
wife of Amos Barton, going to bed with her unmended 
basket of stockings in great fatigue, yet in great love and 
trust, and contrast it with that figure of Prometheus, 
nailed to the Caucasian rock in pain and hate, which 
formed the first object of these studies. What prodigious 
spiritual distance we have swept over from the Titan 
lying down, to unrest, thundering defiance against Jove's 
thunder, as if clashing shield against shield, and the ten- 
der-limbed woman whom the simple narrative puts before 
us in these words : " Her body was very weary, but her 
heart was not heavy . . . . ; for her heart so over- 
flowed with love," &c. Fixing your attention upon this 
word " love," and reminding you how, at the close of the 
last lecture, we found that the whole movement of the 
human spirit which we have traced here as the growth of 
personality towards the unknown — towards fellow-man — 
towards nature, — resulting in music, in the novel, in sci- 
ence — that this whole movement becomes a unity when 
we arrive at the fact that it really imparts a complete 
change in man's most ultimate conception of things— a 
change, namely, from the conception of Justice as the or- 
ganic idea of moral order, a conception which we have 
seen ^schylus and Plato vainly working out to the out- 
rageous conclusions of Prometheus, of the Republic ; to 
the conception of Love as the organic idea of moral 



1 66 The English Novel 

order, a conception which we are just now to see George 
Eliot working out to the divinely-satisfactory conclusion of 
Milly Barton, who conquers with gentle love a world which 
proved refractory alike to the justice of Jove and the defi- 
ance of Prometheus ; reminding you, I say, of this concur- 
rent change from feeble personality and justice to strong 
personality and love, what an amazing arc of progress we 
have traversed in coming from yEschylus to George Eliot ! 

And it is, finally, most interesting to find this change 
receiving clear expression, for the first time in English 
literature, in the works of the two women I have men- 
tioned, Mrs. Browning and George Eliot. In this very 
autumn, when we have seen the editor of Blackwood' s 
Magazine reading the MS. of George Eliot's first story to 
Thackeray, Mrs. Browning is sending Aurora Leigh to 
print; and, as I shall have frequent occasion to point out, 
the burden of Aurora Leigh as well as of George Eliot's 
whole cyclus of characters is love. 

There is a charming scene in the first Act of Bayard 
Taylor's Prince Denkalion, -which, though not extending 
to the height we have reached, yet very dramatically 
sums up a great number of ideas which converge towards 
it. In this scene Gaea, the Earth, mother of men, is 
represented as tenderly meditating upon her son, man. 
Near her stands a rose-tree, from one bud of which Love 
is presently to emerge. She says : 

" I change with man, 
Mother, not more than partner, of his fate. 
Ere he was born I dreamed that he might be, 
And through long ages of imperfect Mfe 
Waited for him. Then vexed with monstrous shapes, 
That spawned and wallowed in primeval ooze, 
I lay supine and slept, or dreamed to sleep ; 
And dreamed, or waking felt as in a dream, 
Some touch of hands, some soft delivering help, 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 67 

And he was there ! His faint new voice I heard ; 

His eye that met the sun, his upright tread, 

Thenceforth were mine ! And with him came the palm, 

The oak, the rose, the swan, the nightingale ; 

The barren bough hung apples to the sun ; 

Dry stalks made harvest : breezes in the woods 

Then first found music, and the turbid sea 

First rolled a crystal breaker to the shore. 

His foot was on the mountains, and the wave 

Upheld him : over all things huge and coarse 

There came the breathing of a regal sway, 

Which bent them into beauty. Order new 

Followed the march of new necessity. 

And what was useless, or unclaimed before, 

Took value from the seizure of his hands." 

In the midst of like thoughts, a bud on a rose which 
stands by Gjea bursts open, and Eros, the antique god 
of young love, appears from it. 

G^A. 
Blithe, tricksome spirit ! art thou left alone 
Of gods and all their intermediate kin 
The sweet survivor ? Yet a single seed, 
When soil and seasons lend their alchemy. 
May clothe a barren continent in green. 

EROS. 

Was I born, that I should die? 
Stars that fringe the outer sky 
Know me : yonder sun were dim 
Save my torch enkindle him. 
Then, when first the primal pair 
Found me in the twilight air, 
I was older than their day. 
Yet to them as young as they. 
All decrees of fate I spurn ; 
Banishment is my return : 
Hate and force purvey for me, 
Death is shining victory. 



1 68 The English Novel 



VIII. 

If you should be wandering meditatively along the 
banks of some tiny brook, so narrow that you can leap 
across it without effort, so quiet in its singing its 
loudest tinkle cannot be heard in the next field, carrying 
upon its bosom no craft that would draw more water 
than the curving leaf of a wild-rose floating down 
stream, too small in volume to dream of a mill-wheel 
and turning nothing more practical than maybe a piece 
of violet petal in a little eddy off somewhere, — if, I say, 
you should be strolling alongside such a brook and 
should see it suddenly expand, without the least interme- 
diate stage, into a mighty river, turning a thousand 
great wheels for man's profit as it swept on to the sea, 
and offering broad highway and favorable currents to a 
thousand craft freighted with the most precious cargoes 
of human aspirations ; you would behold the aptest phys- 
ical semblance of that spiritual phenomenon which we 
witnessed at our last meeting, when in tracing the quiet 
and mentally wayward course of demure Marian Evans 
among the suave pastorals of her native Warwickshire, 
we came suddenly upon the year 1857 when her first 
venture in fiction — The Scenes from Clerical Life ap- 
peared in Blackzvood's Magazine and magically enlarged 
the stream of her influence from the diameter of a small 
circle of literary people in London to the width of all 
England. 

At this point it seems interesting now to pause a 
moment, to look about and see exactly what network 
English fiction had done since its beginning, only about 
168 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 69 

a century before ; to note more particularly what were 
the precise gains to humanity which Thackeray and 
Dickens had poured in just at this time of 1857; and 
thus to differentiate a clear view of the actual contribu- 
tion which George Eliot was now beginning to make to 
English life and thought. 

It is not a pleasant task, however instructive, to leave 
off looking at a rose and cast one's contemplation down 
to the unsavory muck in which its roots are imbedded. 
This, however, is what one must do when one passes from 
the many-petalled rose • of George Eliot's fiction to the 
beginning of the English novel. 

This beginning was as curious as it was unlooked for 
by the people engaged in it. 

In the year 1740, a book in two volumes called 
Pamela: or The Reward of Virtue, was printed, in which 
Samuel Richardson took what seems to have been the 
first revolutionary departure from the wild and complex 
romances — such for example, as Sir Philip Sidney's 
Arcadia — which had formed the nearest approach to the 
modern novel until then. At this time Richardson was 
fifty years old, and probably the last man in England 
who would have been selected as likely to write an 
epoch-making book of any description. 

He had worked most of his life as a printer, but by 
the time referred to had gotten so far towards the literaiy 
life as to be employed by booksellers to arrange indexes 
and to write prefaces and dedications. It so happened 
that on a certain occasion he was asked by two book- 
sellers to write a volume of letters on different subjects 
which might serve as models to uneducated persons — a 
sort of Every Man His Own Letter Writer, or the like. 

The letters, in order to be more useful, were to be upon 
such subjects as the rustic world might likely desire to 
8 



170 The English Novel 

correspond about. Richardson thinks it over; and pres- 
ently writes to inquire, " Will it be any harm, in a piece 
you want to be written so low, if we should instruct 
them how they should think and act in common cases, 
as well as indite ? " This seemed a capital idea and in 
the course of time, after some experiments, and after re- 
calling an actual story he had once heard which gave 
him a sort of basis, he takes for his heroine a simple 
servant-girl, daughter of Goodman Andrews, a humbly 
born English farmer, rather sardonically names her 
Pamela after the Lady Pamela in Sir Philip Sidney's 
Arcadia, carries her pure through a series of incredibly 
villainous plots against her by the master of the house 
where she is at service, and who takes advantage of the 
recent death of his wife, Pamela's mistress, to carry 
these on, and finally makes the master marry her in a fit 
of highly spasmodic goodness, after a long course of the 
most infamous but unsuccessful villainy, calls the book 
Pamela or Virtue Rcivardcd, prints it, and in a very 
short time wins a great host of admiring readers, inso- 
much that since the first two volumes ended with the 
marriage, he adds two more showing the married life of 
Pamela and her squire. 

The whole novel, like all of Richardson's, is written in 
the form of letters passing between the characters. It 
is related, apropos of his genius in letter writing, that in 
his boyhood he was the love-letter-writer-in-chief for 
three of the young ladies of his town, and that he main- 
tained this embarrassing position for a long time without 
suspicion from either of the three. Richardson himself 
announces the moral purpose of his book, saying that 
he thinks it might " introduce a new species of writing 
that might possibly turn young people into a course of 
reading different from the pomp and parade of romance- 



And the Principle of its Development. 171 

writing, and .... promote the cause of religion and 
virtue;" and in the preface to the continuation before- 
mentioned, he remarks as follows : " The two former 
volumes oi Pamela met with a success greatly exceeding 
the most sanguine expectations; and the editor hopes" 
(Richardson calls himself the editor of the letters), "that 
the letters which compose these will be found equally- 
written to nature, avoiding all romantic flights, improb- 
able surprises, and irrational machinery; and that the 
passions are touched where requisite; and rules equally 
new and practicable inculcated throughout the whole 
for the general conduct of life." I have given these 
somewhat tedious quotations from Richardson's own 
words, to show first that the English novel starts out 
with a perfectly clear and conscious moral mission, and 
secondly, to contrast this pleasing moral announcement 
of Richardson's with what I can only call the silly and 
hideous realization of it which meets us when we come 
actually to read this wonderful first English novel — 
Pamela. 

I have already given the substance of the first two 
volumes in which the rich squire, Mr. B. (as he is called 
throughout the novel), finally marries and takes home 
the girl who had been the servant of his w^ife and against 
whom, ever since that lady's death, he had been plotting 
with an elaborate baseness which has never before been, 
and I sincerely hope will never hereafter be described. 
By this action Mr. B. has, in the opinion of Richardson, 
of his wife, the servant girl, and of the whole contem- 
porary world, saturated himself with such a flame of 
saintliness as to have burnt out every particle of any 
little misdemeanors he may have been guilty of in his 
previous existence; and I need only read you an occa- 
sional line from the first four letters of the third volume 



172 The E^iglish Novel 

in order to show the marvellous sentimentality, the un- 
truth towards nature, and the purely commercial view of 
virtue and of religion which make up this intolerable 
book. At the opening of Volume III. we find that 
Goodman Andrews, the father of the bride, and his wife 
have been provided with a comfortable farm on the estate 
of Mr. B., and the second letter is from Andrews to his 
daughter, the happy bride, Pamela. After rhapsodizing 
for several pages, Andrews reaches this climax — and it 
is worth while observing that though only a rude farmer of 
the eighteenth century whose daughter was a servant maid, 
he writes in the most approved epistolary style of the 
period : 

" When here in this happy dwelling and this well-stocked farm, 
in these rich meadows and well-cropped acres, we look around us 
and whichever way we turn our heads see blessings upon blessings 
and plenty upon plenty ; see barns well stored, poultry increasing, 
the kine lowing and crowding about us, and all fruitful ; and are 
bid to call all these our own. And then think that all is the reward 
of our child's virtue ! O, my dear daughter, who can bear these 
things ! Excuse me ! I must break off a little ! For my eyes are 
as full as my heart ; and I will retire to bless God and your hon- 
ored husband." 

Here there is a break in the page, by which the honest 
farmer is supposed to represent the period of time occu- 
pied by him in retiring, and, as one hopes, dividing his 
blessing impartially between the Creator and Pamela's 
honored husband — and the farmer resumes his writing : 

" So, my dear child, I now again take up my pen. But reading 
what I had written, in order to carry on the thread, I can hardly 
forbear again being in like sort affected.'' 

And here we have a full stop and a dash, during which 
it is only fair to suppose that the honest Andrews 
manages to weep and bless up to something like a state 
of repose. 



And the Principle of its Develop7nent. i 'j'}^ 

Presently Pamela: 

" My dear father and mother ; I have shown your letter to my 
beloved .... 'Dear good soul,' said he, 'how does everything 
they say and everything they write manifest the worthiness of their 
hearts! Tell them .... let them find out another couple as 
worthy as themselves, and I will do as much for them. Indeed I 
would not place them,' continued the dear obliger, ' in the same 
county, because I would wish two counties to be blessed for their 
sakes.' .... I could only fly to his generous bosom .... and 
with my eyes swimming in tears of grateful joy .... bless God 
and bless him with my whole heart ; for speak I could not ! but 
almost choked with joy, sobbed to him my grateful acknowledge- 
ments ''Tis too much, too much,' said I, in broken accents. 

' O, sir, bless me more gradually and more cautiously — for I can- 
not bear it ! ' And, indeed, my heart Avent flutter, flutter, flutter, 
at his dear breast, as if it wanted to break its too narrow prison to 
mingle still more intimately with his own." 

And a few lines further on we have this purely com- 
mercial view of religion : 

"And if our prayers shall be heard," continues Pamela, "and 
we shall have the pleasure to think that his" (her husband's) "ad- 
vances in piety are owing not a little to them .... then indeed 
may we take the pride to think we have repaid his goodness to us 
and that we have satisfied the debt which nothing less can dis- 
charge." 

Or, again, in the same letter, she exclaims anew: 

"See, O see, my excellent parents, how we are crowned with 
blessings upon blessings, until we are the talk of all who know us; 
you for your honesty, I for my humility and virtue; " so that now 
I have " nothing to do but to reap all the rewards which this life 
can afford ; and if I walk humbly and improve my blessed opportu- 
nities, will heighten and perfect all, in a still more joyful futurity.*' 

Perhaps a more downright creed, not only of worldli-. 
ness, but of " other-worldliness," was never more expli- 
citly avowed. 



I 74 TJie English Novel 

Now, to put the whole moral effect of this book into a 
nutshell — Richardson had gravely announced it as a warn- 
ing to young servant-girls, but why might he not as 
well have announced it as an encouragement to old vil- 
lains ? The virtue of Pamela, it is true, is duly rewarded: 
but Mr. B., with all his villainy, certainly fares better 
than Pamela : for he not only receives to himself a para- 
gon of a wife, but the sole operation of his previous vil- 
lainy towards her is to make his neighbors extol him to 
the skies as a saint, when he turns from it ; so that, 
considering the enormous surplus of Mr. B.'s rewards as 
against Pamela's, instead of the title Pamela ; or, TJic Re- 
ward of Virtue, ought not the book to have been called 
J//'. B. ; or, The Rczuard of Villainy ? 

It was expressly to ridicule some points of Richard- 
son's Pamela that the second English novel was written. 
This was Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrezvs, which ap- 
peared in 1742. It may be that the high birth of Field- 
ing — his father was great-grandson of the Earl of Den- 
bigh, and a lieutenant-general in the army — had something 
to do with his opposition to Richardson, who was the son 
of a joiner; at any rate, he puts forth a set of exactly 
opposite characters to those in Pamela, takes a footman 
for his virtuous hero, and the footman's mistress for his 
villainous heroine, names the footman Joseph Andrews, 
explaining that he was the brother of Richardson's Pa- 
mela, who, you remember, was the daughter of Goodman 
Andrews, makes principal figures of two parsons. Parson 
Adams and Parson Trulliber, the former of whom is set up 
as a model of clerical behavior, and the latter the reverse ; 
and with these main materials, together with an important 
peddler, he gives us the book still called by many the 
greatest English novel, originally entitled : The Adven- 
tures of Joseph Andrews and His Friend Abraham Ada^ns. 



And the Prmciple of its DevelopiJient. 175 

I will not, because I cannot, here cite any of the vital 
portions of Joseph Andrczvs which produce the real 
moral effect of the book upon a reader. I can only say, 
that it is not different in essence from the moral effect of 
Richardson's book just described, though the tone is 
more clownish. But for particular purposes of compari- 
son with Dickens and George Eliot hereafter, let me 
recall to you in the briefest way two of the comic scenes. 
That these are fair samples of the humorous atmosphere 
of the book I may mention that they are both among the 
number which were selected by Thackeray, who was a keen 
lover of Fielding generally, and of his Joseph Andrews 
particularly, for his own illustrations upon his own copy 
of this book. 

In the first scene Joseph Andrews is riding along the 
road upon a very untrustworthy horse who has already 
given him a lame leg by a fall, attended by his friend 
Parson Adams. They arrive at an inn, dismount, and 
ask for lodging : the landlord is surly, and presently be- 
haves uncivilly to Joseph Andrews; whereupon Parson 
Adams, in defence of his lame friend, knocks the land- 
lord sprawling upon the floor of his own inn ; the land- 
lord, however, quickly receives reinforcements, and his 
wife, seizing a pan of hog's blood which stood on the 
dresser, discharged it with powerful effect into the good 
parson's face. While the parson is in this condition, 
enters Mrs. Slipshod — a veritable Grendel's mother — 

" Terrible termagant, mindful of mischief," 

and attacks the landlady, with fearsome results of up- 
rooted hair and defaced feature. In scene second, Parson 
Adams being in need of a trifling loan, goes to see his 
counter parson Trulliber, who was noted, among other 
things, for his fat hogs. Unfortunately Parson Adams 



176 The English Novel 

meets Mrs. Trulliber first, and is mistakenly introduced 
by her to her husband as "a man come for some of his 
hogs." TrulHber immediately begins to brag of the fat- 
ness of his swine, and drags Parson Adams to his stye, 
insisting upon examination in proof of his praise. Par- 
son Adams complies ; they reach the stye, and by way 
of beginning his examination, Parson Adams lays hold 
of the tail of a very high-fed, capricious hog ; the beast 
suddenly springs forward, and throws Parson Adams 
headlong into the deep mire. Trulliber bursts into 
laughter, and contemptuously cries : " Why, dost not 
know how to handle a hog?" 

It is impossible for lack of space to linger over further 
characteristics of these writers. It has been very fairly 
said, that Fielding tells us what o'clock it is, while Rich- 
ardson shows us how the watch is made ; and this, as 
characterizing the highly analytic faculty of Richardson 
in contrast to the more synthetic talent of Fielding, is 
good as far as it goes. 

In 1748 appears Richardson's Clarissa Harloive in 
eight volumes, which, from your present lecturer's point 
of view, is quite sufficiently described as a patient analy- 
sis of the most intolerable crime in all history or fiction, 
watered with an amount of tears and sensibility as much 
greater than that in Pamela as the cube of eight volumes 
is greater than the cube of four volumes. 

In 1753 Richardson's third and last novel, Sir CJiarlcs 
Grandison, appeared ; a work differing in motive, but 
not in moral tone, from the other two, though certainly 
less hideous than Clarissa Harlowe. 

Returning to bring up Fielding's novels, in 1743 ap- 
peared his History of the Life of the late Mr. Jonatlian 
Wild the Great, in which the hero Jonathan Wild was a 
taker of thieves, or detective, who ended his own career 



And the Principle of its Development. 177 

by being hung ; the book being written professedly as 
"an exposition of the motives that actuate the unprinci- 
pled great, in every walk and sphere of life, and which 
are common alike to the thief or murderer on the small 
scale and to the mighty villain and reckless conqueror 
who invades the rights or destroys the liberties of na- 
tions." In 1749 Fielding prints his Tom Jones, which 
some consider his greatest book. The glory of Tom 
yones is Squire Allworthy, whom we are invited to re- 
gard as the most miraculous product of the divine crea- 
tion so far in the shape of man ; but to your present lec- 
turer's way of thinking, the kind of virtue represented 
by Squire Allworthy is completely summed in the fol- 
lowing sentence of the work introducing him in the 
midst of nature : it is a May morning, and Squire All- 
worthy is pacing the terrace in front of his mansion be- 
fore sunrise; "when," says Fielding, "in the full blaze 
of his majesty up rose the sun, than which one object 
alone in this lower creation could be more glorious, and 
that Mr. Allworthy himself presented — a human being 
replete with benevolence meditating in what manner he 
might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by 
doing most good to his creatures;" that is, in plain com- 
mercial terms, how he might obtain the largest possible 
amount upon the letter of credit which he found himself 
forced to buy against the inevitable journey into the for- 
eign parts lying beyond the waters of death. 

Out of Fielding's numerous other writings, dramatic 
and periodical, it is perhaps necessary to mention farther 
only his Amelia, belonging to the year 175 1, in which he 
praised his first wife and satirized the jails of his time. 

We must now hastily pass to the third so-called classic 
writer in English fiction, Tobias Smollett, who, after 
being educated as a surgeon, and having experiences of 



178 The English Novel 

life as surgeon's mate on a ship of the line in the expe- 
dition to Carthagena, spent some time in the West 
Indies, returned to London, wrote some satire , an opera, 
&c., and presently when he was still only twenty-seven 
years old captivated England with his first novel, Roder- 
ick Randojn, vjh.\c\\ appeared, in 1748, the same year with 
Clarissa Harlozve. In 175 1 came Smollett's Peregrine 
Pickle, famous for its bright fun and the caricature it 
contains of Akenside — Pleasures of Imagination " Aken- 
side, who is represented as the host in a very absurd en- 
tertainment after the ancient fashion. In 1752 Smollett's 
Adventures of Ferdinand Count FatJioni gave the world a 
new and very complete study in human depravity. In 
1769, appeared his Adventures of an Atom; a theme 
which one might suppose it difficult to make indecorous^ 
and which was really a political satire ; but the unfor- 
tunate liberty of locating his atom as an organic particle 
in various parts of various successive human bodies gave 
Smollett a field for indecency which he cultivated to its 
utmost yield. A few months before his death in 1771 
appeared his Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, certainly 
his best novel. It is worth while noticing that in Hum- 
phrey Clinker the veritable British woman, poorly-edu- 
cated and poor-spelling, begins to express herself in the 
actual dialect of the species ; and in the letters of Mrs. 
Winifred Jenkins to her fellow-maid-servant Mrs. Mary 
Jones at Brambleton Hall, during a journey made by the 
family to the North we have some very worthy and strong- 
ly-marked originals not only of Mrs. Malaprop and Mrs. 
Partington, but of the immortal Sairey Gamp and of 
scores of other descendants in Thackeray and Dickens, 
here and there. 

I can quote but a few lines from the last letter of Mrs. 
Winifred Jenkins concluding the Expedition of Hum- 



A)id the Priftciple of its Development. 179 

pJircy Clinker, which by the way is told entirely through 
letters from one character to another, like Richardson's. 

" To Mrs. Mary Jones at Brambleton Hall, 
Mrs. Jones, : — 

Providence lias bin pleased to make great halt- 
eration in the pasture of our affairs. We were yesterday three 
kiple chined by the grease of God in the holy bands of matter- 
money." 

(The novel winds up with a general marriage of pretty much all 
parties concerned, mistress, maid, master and man) ; " and I now 
subscribe myself Loyd, at your sarvice." Here she of course de- 
scribes the wedding. "As for Madam Lashmiheygo, you nose her 
picklearities — her head to be sure was fantastical ; and her spouse 
had wrapped her with a long . . . clock from the land of the sel- 
vedges . . . Your humble servant had on a plain pea-green tabby 
sack, with my runnela cap, ruff toupee, and side-curls. They said 
I was the very moral of Lady Rickmanstone but not so pale — that 
may well be, for her ladyship is my elder by seven good years or 
more. Now, Mrs. Mary, our satiety is to suppurate ; and we are 
coming home " — which irresistibly reminds us of the later Mrs. 
Malaprop's famous explanation in The Rivals : — " I was putrefied 
with astonishment." — " Present my compliments to Mrs. Gwillim, 
and I hope she and I will live upon dissent terms of civility. 
Being by God's blessing removed to a higher spear you'll excuse 
my being familiar with the lower sarvints of the family, but as I 
trust you will behave respectful and keep a proper distance you 
may always depend on the good will and protection of 

Yours, 

W. LOYD." 

To these I have now only to add the name of Law- 
rence Sterne, whose Tristram Shandy appeared in 1759, 
in order to complete a group of novel writers whose 
moral outcome is much the same, and who are still 
reputed in all current manuals as the classic founders of 
English fiction. I need give no characterization of 
Sterne's book, which is probably best known of all the 
three. Every one recalls the Chinese puzzle of humor 



igo The English Novel 

in Tristram Shandy, which pops something grotesque or 
indecent at us in every crook. As to its morality, I 
know good people who love the book ; but to me, when 
you sum it all up, its teaching is that a man may spend 
his life in low, brutish, inane pursuits, and may have a 
good many little private sins on his conscience, but will, 
nevertheless, be perfectly sure of heaven if he can have 
retained the ability to weep a maudlin tear over a tale of 
distress ; or, in short, that a somewhat irritable state of 
the lachrymal glands will be cheerfully accepted by the^ 
Deity as a substitute for saving grace or a life of self- 
sacrifice. As I have said, these four writers still main- 
tain their position as the classic novelists, and their 
moral influence is still copiously extolled ; but I cannot 
help believing that much of this praise is simply well 
meaning ignorance. I protest that I can read none of 
these books without feeling as if my soul had been in 
the rain, draggled, muddy, miserable. In other words, 
they play upon life as upon a violin without a bridge, in 
the deliberate endeavor to get the most depressing tones 
possible from the instrument. This is done under pre- 
text of showing us vice. 

In fine, and this is the characterization I shall use in 
contrasting this group with that much sweeter group led 
by George Eliot, the distinctive feature of these first 
novelists is to show men with microscopic detail how 
bad men may be. I shall presently illustrate with the 
George Eliot group how much larger the mission of the 
novel is than this ; meantime, I cannot -leave this matter 
without recording, in the plainest terms, that, for far 
deeper reasons than those which Roger Bacon gave for 
sweeping away the works of Aristotle, if I had my way 
with these classic books I would blot them from the face 
of the earth. One who studies the tortuous behaviors 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 8 1 

of men in history soon ceases to wonder at any human 
inconsistency; but, so far as I can marvel, I do daily 
that we regulate by law the sale* of gunpowder, the 
storage of nitro-glycerine, the administration of poison — 
all of which can hurt but our bodies — but are absolutely 
careless of these things — so-called classic books, which 
wind their infinite insidiousnesses about the souls of 
our young children, and either strangle them or cover 
them with unremovable slime under our very eyes, 
^working in a security of fame and so-called classicism 
that is more effectual for this purpose than the security 
of the dark. Of this terror it is the sweetest souls who 
know most. 

In the beginning of Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Browning 
speaks this matter so well that I must clinch my opinion 
with her words. Aurora Leigh says, recalling her own 
youthful experience : 

" Sublimest danger, over which none weep. 

When any young wayfaring soul goes forth 

Alone, unconscious of the perilous road, 

The day-sun dazzling in his limpid eyes. 

To thrust his own way, he an alien, through 

The world of books ! Ah, you ! — you think it fine, 

You clap hands — 'A fair day ! ' — you cheer him on 

As if the worst could happen, were to rest 

Too long beside a fountain. Yet behold. 

Behold ! — the world of books is still the world ; 

And worldlings in it are less merciful 

And more puissant. For the wicked there 

Are winged like angels. Every knife that strikes 

Is edged from elemental fire to assail 

Our spiritual life. The beautiful seems right 

By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong 

Because of weakness 

In the book-world, true, 

There's no lack, neither, of God's saints and kings . . , 



1 82 The English Novel 

True, many a prophet teaches in the roads . . . 
But stay — who judges ? . . . 

The child there ? Would you leave 

That child to wander in a battle-field 
And push his innocent smile against the guns ? 
Or even in the catacombs — his torch 
Grown ragged in the fluttering air, and all 
The dark a-mutter round him? not a child 1" 

But to return to our sketch of English fiction, it is 
now dehghtful to find a snowdrop springing fi"om this 
muck of the classics. In the year 1766 appeared Gold- 
smith's Vicar of Wakefield. 

One likes to recall the impression which the purity of 
this charming book made upon the German Goethe. 
Fifty years after Goethe had read it — or rather after 
Herder read to him a translation of the Vicar of Wake- 
field while he was a law-student at Strasburg — the old 
poet mentions in one of his letters to Zelter the strong 
and healthy influence of this story upon him, just at the 
critical point of his mental development ; and yesterday 
while reading the just published Reminiscences of Thomas 
Carlyle I found a pleasant pendant to this testimony of 
Goethe's in favor of Goldsmith's novel in an entry of 
the rugged old man in which he describes the far out- 
look and new wisdom which he managed to conquer 
from Goethe's Wilhelin Meister, after many repulsions. 

"Schiller done, I began Wilhelm Meister, a task I liked perhaps 
rather better, too scanty as my knowledge of the element, and even 
of the language, still was. Two years before I had at length, after 
some repulsion, got into the heart of Wilhelm Meister, and eagerly 
read it through ; my sally out, after finishing, along the vacant 
streets of Edinburgh, a windle-^s, Scotch-mistymorning.is still vivid 
to me. ' Grand, serenely, harmoniously built together, far-seeing, 
wise and true. Where, for many years, or in my whole life before, 
have I read such a book ? ' Which I was now, really in part as a 



And the Prmciple of its Development. 183 

kind of duty, conscientiously translating for my countrymen, if 
they would read it — as a select few of them have ever since kept 
doing." 

Of the difference between the moral effect of Gold- 
smith's Vicar of Wakefield and the classical works just 
mentioned I need not waste your time in speaking. No 
great work in the English novel appears until we reach 
Scott whose fF^z^^r/^j/ astonished the world in 1814; and 
during the intervening period from this book to the Vicar 
of Wakefield perhaps there are no works notable enough 
to be mentioned in so rapid a sketch as this unless it be 
the society novels of Miss Burney, Evelina and Cecdia, 
the dark and romantic stories of Mrs. Radcliffe, the 
Caleb Williauis of William Godwin — with which he be- 
lieved he was making an epoch because it was a novel 
without love as a motive — Miss Edgeworth's moral 
tales and the quiet and elegant narratives of Jane Austen. 

But I cannot help mentioning here a book which oc- 
curs during this period, and which attaches itself by the 
oddest imaginable ties to what was said in a previous 
lecture, of The Novel, as the true meeting-ground where 
the poetic imagination and the scientific imagination 
come together and incorporate themselves. Now, to 
make the true novel — the work which takes all the mis- 
cellaneous products of scientific observation and carries 
them up into a higher plane and incarnates them into 
the characters (as we call them) of a book, and makes 
them living flesh and blood like ourselves — to effect this, 
there must be a true incorporation and merger of the 
scientific and poetic faculties into one : it is not sufficient 
if they work side by side like two horses abreast, they 
must work like a man and wife with one soul ; or to 
change the figure, their union must not be mechanical, 
it must be chemical, producing a thing better than 



184 The English Novel 

either alone ; or to change the figure again, the union 
must be like that which Browning has noticed as exist- 
ing among the ingredients of a musical chord, when, as 
he says, out of three tones, we make not a fourth, but a 
star. 

Now the book I mean shows us the scientific faculty, 
and the poetic faculty — and no weak Acuities either — 
working along together, not merged, not chemically 
united, not lighting up matter like a star, — with the 
result, as seems to me, of producing the very drollest 
earnest book in our language. It is The Loves of the 
Plants, by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather, I believe, to 
our own grave and patient Charles Darwin. The Loves of 
the Plants is practically a series of little novels in which 
the heroes and heroines belong to the vegetable world. 
Linnaeus had announced the sexuality of plants, and so 
had made this idea a principle of classification, the one- 
stamen class, Monandria, two stamen class, Diandria, 
etc., etc. Now all this the diligent and truly loving 
Doctor framed into poetry, and poetry which so far as 
technical execution goes is quite as good as the very 
best of the Pope school which it follows. Here are a 
few specimens of the poem : 

" Descend, ye hovering sylphs ! aerial quires, 
And sweep with little hands your silver lyres ; 
With fairy footsteps print your grassy rings, 
Ye Gnomes ! accordant to the tinkling strings : 
While in soft notes I tune to oaten reed 
Gay hopes, and amorous sorrows of the mead ; — 
From giant Oaks, that wave their branches dark. 
To the dwarf Moss that clings upon their bark. 
What Beaux and Beauties crowd the gaudy groves, 
And woo and win their vegetable Loves. 
***** 

" First the tall Canna lifts his curled brow 



And the Principle of its Development. 185 

Erect to heaven, and plights his nuptial vow ; 
The virtuous pair, in milder regions born, 
Dread the rude blast of Autumn's icy morn ; 
Round the chill fair he folds his crimson vest. 
And clasps the timorous beauty to his breast!" 

Here, however, a serious case presents itself; in Carina 
there was one stamen to one pistil, and this was com- 
fortable ; but in the next flower he happened to reach — 
the Genista or Wild Broom — there were ten stamens to 
one pistil ; that is, ten lovers to one lady ; but the intrepid 
Doctor carries it through, all the same, managing the 
whole point simply by airy swiftness of treatment : 

" Sweet blooms Genista* in the myrtle shade. 
And ten fond brothers woo the haughty maid." 

But sometimes our botanist comes within a mere ace 
of beautiful poetry, as for example : 

"When o'er the cultured lawns and dreary wastes, 
Retiring Autumn flings her howling blasts, 
Bends in tumultuous waves the struggling woods, 
And showers their leafy honors on the floods ; 
In withering heaps collects the flowery spoil ; 
And each chill insect sinks beneath the soil : 
Quick flies fair Tulipa the loud alarms, 
And folds her infant closer in her arms ; 
In some lone cave, secure pavilion, lies. 
And waits the courtship of serener skies." 

This book has what it calls Interludes between the 
parts, in which the Bookseller and the Poet discuss various 
points arising in it; and its oddity is all the more increased 
when one finds here a number of the most just, incisive, 

* Genista, or Planta Genista, origin of " Plantagenet," from the 
original name-giver's habit of wearing a tuft of his native heath or 
broom in his bonnet. 



1 86 The EnzHsh Novel 



i3 



right-minded and large views not only upon the mechan- 
ism of poetry, but upon its essence and its relations to 
other arts.* 

Nor need I dwell upon Scott's novels, which stretch 
from 1 8 14 to 1831, which we have all known from our 
childhood as among th^^; most hale and strengthening 
waters in which the young soul ever bathed. They 
discuss no moral problems, they place us in no relation 
towards our fellow that can be called moral at all, they 
belong to that part of us which is youthful, undebating, 
wholly unmoral — though not immoral — they are simply 
always young, always healthy, always miraculous. And 
I can only give now a hasty additional flavor of these 
Scott days by reminding you of the bare names of 
Thomas Hope, Lockhart, Theodore Hook, Mrs. Trol- 
lope, Mrs. Gore and Miss Mitford. It seems always 

* Carlyle's opinion of the book is given with a comical grimness 
in his Reminiscences a propos of the younger Erasmus Darwin, 
who used much to visit the Carlyles after they settled in London : 

" Erasmus Darwin, a most diverse kind of mortal, came to seek 
us out very soon ('had heard of Carlyle in Germany,' &c.), and 
continues ever since to be a quiet home-friend, honestly attached; 
though his visits latterly have been rarer and rarer, health so poor, 
I so occupied, etc., etc. He had something of original and sarcas- 
tically ingenious in him ; one of the sincerest, naturally honest, and 
most modest of men ; elder brother of Charles Darwin (the famed 
Darwin on Species of these days), to whom I rather prefer him for 
intellect, had not his health quite doomed him to silence and pa- 
tient idleness — grandsons, both, of the first famed Erasmus (' Bo- 
tanic Garden,' etc.), who also seems to have gone upon ' species ' 
questions, 'omnia ex conchis'' (all from oysters), being a dictum of 
his (even a stamp he sealed with still extant), as this present Eras- 
mus once told me, many long years before this of Darwin on Species 
came up among us. Wonderful to me, as indicating the capricious 
stupidity of mankind : never could read a page of it, or waste the 
least thought upon it." 



And the Principle of its Development. 187 

comfortable in a confusion of this kind to have some 
easily-remembered formula which may present us a 
considerable number of important facts in portable 
shape. Now the special group of writers which I wish 
to contrast with the classic group, consisting of Dickens, 
Thackeray, Tennyson, Mrs. Browning, Charlotte Bronte, 
and George Eliot, are at work between 1837 and 1857 ; 
and for the purpose of giving you a convenient skeleton 
or set of vertebras, containing some main facts affecting 
the English novel of the nineteenth century, I have 
arranged this simple table which proceeds by steps of 
ten years up to the period mentioned. 

For example : since these all end in seven ; beginning 
with the year 1807, it seems easy to remember that that 
is the date of Charles and Mary Lamb's Talcs from 
Sliakspeare ; skipping ten years to 18 17, in this year 
Blackwood's Magazine is established, a momentous event 
in fiction generally and particularly as to George Eliot's; 
advancing ten years, in 1827, Bulwer's Pelham appears, 
and also the very stimulating Specimens of German Ro- 
mance, which Thomas Carlyle edited; in 1837 the ador- 
able Pickivick strolls into fiction; in 1847 Thackeray 
prints Vanity Fair, Charlotte Bronte gives us Jane Eyre, 
and Tennyson The Princess; and finally, in 1857, as we 
have seen, George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life are 
printed, while so closely upon it in the previous year as 
to be fairly considered contemporary, comes Mrs. Brown- 
ing's Aurora Leigh. 

Now I do not know any more vivid way of bringing 
before you the precise work which English" fiction is 
doing at the time George Eliot sets in, than by asking 
you to run your eye along the last four dates here given, 
1827, 1837, 1847, 1857. Here, in 1827, advances a well- 
dressed man, bows a fine bow, and falls to preaching his 



1 88 The English Novel 

gospel : " My friends, under whatever circumstances a 
man may be placed, he has it always in his power to be 
a gentleman;" and Bulwer's gentleman is always given 
as a very manful and Christian being. I am well aware 
of the modern tendency to disparage Bulwer, as a slight 
creature; but with the fresh recollection of his books as 
they fell upon my own boyhood, I cannot recall a single 
one which did not leave, as a last residuum, the picture 
in some sort of the chivalrous gentleman impressed 
upon my heart. I cheerfully admit that he sometimes 
came dangerously near snobbery, and that he was un- 
civil and undignified and many other bad things in the 
New Tintoii and the Tennyson quarrel ; and I concede 
that it must be difficult for us — you and me, who are so 
superior and who have no faults of our own — to look 
upon these failings with patience ; and yet I cannot help 
remembering that every novel of Bulwer's is skilfully 
written and entertaining, and that there is not an ignoble 
thought or impure stimulus in the whole range of his 
works. 

But, advancing, here, in 1837, comes on a preacher 
who takes up the slums and raggedest miseries of London 
and plumps them boldly down in the parlors of high life; 
and, like the boy in the fairy tale whose fiddle compelled 
every hearer to dance in spite of himself, presently has a 
great train of people following him, ready to do his 
bidding in earnestly reforming the prisons, the schools, 
the workhouses, and the like, what time the entire train 
are roaring with the genialest of laughter at the comical 
and grotesque figures which this peculiar Dickens has 
fished up out of the London mud. 

But again : here, in 1847, we have Thackeray exposing 
shame and high vulgarity and minute wickedness, while 
Charlotte Bronte and Tennyson, with the widest difference 



A7td the Principle of its Development. 1 89 

in method, are for the first time expoundir^g the doctrine 
of co-equal sovereignty as between man and woman, 
and bringing up the historic conception of the person- 
ahty of woman to a plane in all respects level with, 
though properly differentiated from, that of man. It is 
curious to see the depth of Charlotte Bronte's adoration 
for Thackeray, the intense, high-pitched woman for the 
somewhat slack, and as I always think, somewhat low- 
pitched satirist ; and perhaps the essential utterance of 
Thackeray, as well as the fervent tone which I beg you to 
observe is now being acquired by the English novel, the 
awful consciousness of its power and its mission, may be 
very sufficiently gathered from some of Charlotte Bronte's 
words about Thackeray which occur in the Preface to the 
second edition of her Jane Eyre: 

" There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed 
to tickle dehcate ears ; who, to my thinking, comes before the great 
ones of society much as the son of Imlah came before the throned 
kings of Judah and Israel ; and who speaks truth as deep, with a 
power as prophet-like and as vital — a mien as dauntless and as 
daring. Is the satirist of Vanity Fair admired in high places ? I 
cannot tell ; but I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls 
the Greek-fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin- 
brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time, they 
or their seed might yet escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead. 

" Why have I alluded to this man ? I have alluded to him, 
reader, because I think 1 see in him an intellect profounder and 
more unique than his contemporaries have yet recognized ; because 
I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day : as the very 
master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the 
warped system of things." 

Now, into this field of beneficent activity which The 
Novel has created, comes in 1857 George Eliot: comes 
with no more noise than that of a snow-flake falling on 
snow, yet — as I have said, and as I wish now to show 



IQO The English Novel 

with some detail — comes as an epoch-maker, both by 
virtue of the peculiar mission she undertakes and of the 
method in which she carries it out. 

What then is that peculiar mission ? 

In the very first of these stories, Amos Barton^ she 
announces it quite explicitly, though it cannot be sup- 
posed at all consciously. Before quoting the passage, 
in order that you may at once take the full significance 
of it, let me remind you of a certain old and grievous 
situation as between genius and the common-place per- 
son. For a long time every most pious thinker must have 
found one of the mysteries most trying to his faith to he 
the strange and apparently unjustifiable partiality of 
God's spiritual gifts as between man and man. 

For example, we have a genius (say) once in a hun- 
dred years ; but this hundred years represents three 
generations of the whole world ; that is to say, here are 
three thousand million commonplace people to one 
genius. 

Now, with all the force of this really inconceiva- 
ble numerical majority, the cry arises. How monstrous ! 
Here are three thousand millions of people to eat, sleep, 
die, and rot into oblivion, and but one man is to have 
such faculty as may conquer death, win fame, and live 
beyond the worms ! 

Now, no one feels this inequality so keenly as the 
great genius himself I find in Shakspeare, in Beethoven, 
in others, often an outcrop of feeling which shows that 
the genius cringes under this load of favoritism, as if he 
should cry in his lonesome moments. Dear Lord, zvhy 
hast thou provided so much for me, and so little for yonder 
multitude ? In plain fact, it seems as if there was never 
such a problem as this : what shall we do about these 
three thousand millions of common men as against the 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 9 1 

one uncommon man, to save the goodness of God from 
seeming like the bhnd caprice of a Roman Emperor! 

It is precisely here that George Eliot comes to the 
rescue; and though she does not solve the problem — 
no one expects to do that — at any rate she seems to me 
to make it tolerable, and to take it out of that class of 
questions which one shuts back for fear of nightmare 
and insanity. Emerson has treated this matter partially 
and from a sort of side-light. " But/' he exclaims in the 
end of his essay on The Uses of Great Men, ''great men, 
— the word is injurious. Is there caste? Is there fate? 
What becomes of the promise to virtue ? . . . Why are 
the masses, from the dawn of history down, food for 
knives and powder ? The idea dignifies a few leaders, 
. . . and they make war and death sacred ; but what for 
the wretches whom they hire and kill? The cheapness 
of man is everyday's tragedy." And more to this pur- 
port. But nothing could be more unsatisfactory than 
Emerson's solution of the problem. He unhesitatingly 
announces on one page that the wrong is to be righted 
by giving every man a chance in the future, in (say) dif- 
ferent worlds ; every man is to have his turn at being a 
genius; until "there are no common men." But two 
pages farther on this elaborate scheme of redress is com- 
pletely swept away by the announcement that after all 
the individual is nothing, the quality is what abides, and 
so falls away in that singular delusion of his, that per- 
sonality is to die away into the first cause. 

On the other hand, if you will permit me to quote a 
{^v^ pathetic words which I find in Carlyle's Reminis- 
cences, in the nature of a sigh and aspiration, and breathed 
blessing all in one upon his wife and her ministrations 
to him during that singular period of his life when he 
suddenly left London and buried himself in his wild 



192 The English Novel 

Scotch farm of Craigenputtoch, I shall be able to show 
you how Carlyle, most unconsciously, dreams toward a 
far more satisfactory end of this matter than Emerson's, 
and then how George Eliot actually brings Carlyle's 
dream to definite form, and at last partial fulfilment in 
the very beginning of her work. Carlyle is speaking of 
the rugged trials and apparent impossibilities of living at 
Craigenputtoch when he and his Jeanie went there, and 
how bravely and quietly she faced and overcame the 
poverty, the ugliness, the almost squalor, which was their 
condition for a long time. " Poverty and mean obstruc- 
tion continued," he says, " to preside over it,' but were 
transformed by human valor of various sorts into a kind 
of victory and royalty. Something of high and great 
dwelt in it, though nothing could be smaller and lower 
than many of the details. How blessed might poor 
mortals be in the straitest circumstances, if only their 
wisdom and fidelity to Heaven and to one another were 
adeqiiatdy great ! It looks to me now like a kind of 
humble russet -coated epic, that seven years' settlement 
at Craigenputtoch, very poor in this world's goods, but 
not without an intrinsic dignity greater and more impor- 
tant than then appeared ; thanks very mainly to her, and 
her faculties and magnanimities, without whom it had 
not been possible." 

And now, let us hear the words in which George 
Eliot begins to preach the " russet-coated epic" of every- 
day life and of commonplace people. 

The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken 
to relate, was, you perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional 
character; and perhaps I am doing a bold thing to bespeak your 
sympathy on behalf of a man who was so very far from remarka- 
ble, — a man whose virtues were not heroic, and who had no unde- 
tected crime within his breast ; who had not the slightest mystery 
hanging about him, but was palpably and unmistakably common- 



A}td the Principle of its Dei.-4opment. 193 

place ; who was not even in love, but had had tha.<- complaint fa- 
vorably many years ago. "An utterly uninteresting character!" 
I think I hear a lady reader exclaim — Mrs. Farthingale,' for exam- 
ple, who prefers the ideal in fiction ; to whom tragedy mt>.ans er- 
mine tippets, adultery, and murder; and comedy, the adventures 
of some personage who is quite a " character." v 

But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your fcl-\ 
low-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp. At least 
eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned 
in the last census are neither extraordinarily wicked, nor extraor- 
dinarily wise ; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with senti- 
ment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms ; they have proba- 
bly had no hair-breadth escapes or thrilling adventures ; their 
brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions 
have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. 
They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose 
conversation is more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these com- 
monplace people — many of them — bear a conscience, and have 
felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right ; they have their 
unspoken sorrows and their sacred joys ; their hearts have perhaps 
gone out towards their first-born, and they have mourned over the 
irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in their very insig- 
nificance — in our comparison of their dim and narrow existence 
with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which they 
share. 

Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn 
with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and 
the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks 
out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite or- 
dinary tone. In that case, I should have no fear of your not caring 
to know what further befell the Rev. Amos Barton, or of your 
thinking the homely details I have to tell at all beneath your at- 
tention. As it is, you can, if you please, decline to pursue my 
story further; and you will easily find reading more to your taste, 
since I learn from the newspapers that many remarkable novels, 
full of striking situations, thrilling incidents, and eloquent writing, 
have appeared only within the last season. 

Let us now pass on to Adam Bedc, The Mid on the 
Floss, and the rest of George Eliot's works in historic 
9 



y 
194 /^rhe English Novel 

order, and ^e with what delicious fun, what play of wit, 
what ever- abiding and depth-illuminating humor, what 
creative genius, what manifold forms of living flesh and 
blood, George Eliot preached the possibility of such 
ni6ral greatness on the part of every most commonplace 
man and woman as completely reduces to a level the 
apparent inequality in the matter of genius, and so illus- 
trated the universal "russet-coated epic." 



And the Principle of its Devv^lopntent. 195 



IX. N^ 

"V 

N 

Before Scenes from Clerical Life had ceased to run, iii^ 
the latter part of the year 1857, George Eliot had already 
begun a novel more complete in form than any of the 
three tales which composed that series. Early in 1858, 
she made a visit to the Continent, and it was from 
Munich that a considerable portion of the MS. of her 
new book was sent to her publisher, Mr. Blackwood. 
This was Adam Bcde, which she completed by the end 
of October, 1858. 

It was brought out immediately in book form ; George 
Eliot seemed desirous of putting the public to a speedier 
test than could be secured by running the story through 
successive numbers of the magazine, as usual; although 
the enthusiastic editor declared himself very willing to 
enrich the pages oi Blackwood' s ^Wh it. It was therefore 
printed in January, 1859. 

I have already cited a letter from Marian Evans to 
Miss Henschel, in which she mentions the only two mat- 
ters of fact connected in the most shadowy way as ori- 
ginals with the' plot of Adam Bede. One of these is that 
in her girlhood, she had met an aunt of hers about sixty 
years old, who had in early life been herself a preacher. 
To this extent, and this only, is there any original for 
our beautiful snowdrop — Dinah Morris, in SU-ttsMctrner. 
Again, in the same letter, George Eliot mentions that 
this same aunt had told her of once spending a night in 
prison to comfort a poor girl who had murdered her 
own child, and that this incident lay in her mind for 
many years, until it became the germ of Adam Bcde. 



196 Alie English Novel 

These are- certainly but shadowy connections ; yet, 
probably,,fene greatest works are built upon quite as filmy 
a relation to any actual precedent facts. A rather pretty 
story is told of Mrs. Carlyle, which, perhaps, very well 
ill;a'strates this filmy relation. It is told that one evenintj 
/she gave to Dickens a subject for a novel which she add 
indeed worked out up to the second volume, the whole 
subject consisting of a weaving together of such insigni- 
ficant observations as any one must make of what goes 
on at houses across the street. For example, — Mrs. 
Carlyle observed of a house nearly opposite them that 
one day the blinds or curtains would be up or down; the 
next day a figure in a given costume would appear at the 
window, or a cab would drive, hastily or otherwise, to 
the door, a visitor would be admitted or rejected, etc ; 
such bits of circumstances she had managed to connect 
with human characters in a subtle way which is said to 
have given Dickens great delight. She never lived, 
however, to finish her novel, thus begun. 

This publication of Adam Bedc, placed George Eliot 
decisively at the head of English novel-writers, with only 
Dickens for second, even ; and thus enables us at this 
point fairly to do what the ages always do in order to 
get that notoriously clear view of things which comes 
with time, and time only, that is to brush away all small 
circumstances and cloudy non-essentials of time so as to 
bring before our minds the whole course of English 
fiction, from its beginning to the stage at which it is now 
pending with Adam Bcdc, as if it concerned but four 
names and two periods, to wit : 

Richardson, 1 ^.^^^^ ^g^j^ ^^ 
Fielding. j ^ 

and 

Dickens, 1 ^^^j^^j^ ^ ^^ century. 

George Eliot, j ^ ^ ■' 



And the Principle of its Developtnent. 197 

Now it was shown in the last lecture how distinctly the 
moral purpose of the English fiction represented by this 
upper group was announced, though wc were obliged to 
record a mournful failure in realizing that announcement. 
Adam Bede gives us the firmest support for a first and 
most notable difference between these two periods of 
English fiction, that while the former professes morality 
yet fails beyond description, the latter executes its 
moral purpose to a practical degree of beneficence be- 
yond its wildest hopes. Without now specifying the 
subtle revolutions which lie in Adam Bcde^ a single 
more tangible example will be sufficient to bring this 
entire difference before you. If I ask you to recall how 
it is less than fifty years ago that Charles Dickens was 
writing of the debtors' prisons with all the terrible earn- 
est of one who had lived with his own father and mother 
in those unspeakable dens ; if I recall to you what mar- 
velous haste for proverbially, slow England the reform 
thus initiated took upon itself, how it flew from this to 
that prison, from this to that statute, from this to that 
country, until now not only is no such thing as im- 
prisonment for debt known to any of Dickens's readers, 
but with the customary momentum of such generous 
impulses in society, the whole movement in favor of 
debtors is clearly going too far and is beginning to 
oppress the creditor with part of the injustice it for- 
merly meted out to the debtor ; if, I say, I thus briefly 
recall to you this single instance of moral purpose car- 
ried into perfect practice, I typify a great and charac- 
teristic distinction between these two schools. For in 
point of fact what one may call an organic impracticabil- 
ity lay at the core of the moral scheme of Richardson 
and Fielding. 

I think all reasoning and experience show that if you 



198 The English Novel 

confront a man day by day with nothing but a picture 
of his own unworthiness, the final effect is, not to stimu- 
late, but to paralyze his moral energy. The picture of 
the man becomes the head of a Gorgon. Now this was 
precisely what this early English fiction professed to do. 
It professed to show man ej^actly as he is; but although 
this profession included the good man as well as the bad 
man, and although there was some endeavor to relieve 
the picture with tints of goodness here and there, the 
final result was — and I fearlessly point any doubter to the 
net outcome from Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe down 
to Huviplirey Clinker — the final result was such a por- 
trayal as must make any man sit down before the picture 
in a miserable deep of contempt for himself and his fel- 
lows, out of which many spirits cannot climb at all, and 
none can climb clean. 

On the other hand, the work of Dickens I have just 
referred to is a fair specimen of the way in which the 
later school of English fiction, while glozing no evil, 
showed man, not how bad he might be, but how good 
he might be ; and thus, instead of paralyzing the moral 
energy, stimulated it to the most beneficent practical 
reform. I think it is Robert Browning who has declared 
that a man is as good as his best ; and there is the 
subtlest connection between the right to measure a man's 
moral stature by the highest thing that he has done, 
rather than the lowest, on the one hand, and that new 
and beautiful inspiration which comes into one's life as 
one contemplates more and more instances of the best 
in human behavior, as these are given by a literature 
which thus lifts one up from day to day with the declara- 
tion that however commonplace a man may be, he yet has 
within himself the highest capabilities of what we have 
agreed to call the russet-coated epic' The George Eliot 



And the Principle of its Development. 1 99 

and Dickens school, in fact, do but expand the text of 
the Master when He urges His disciples : " Be ye per- 
fect as I am perfect." 

Let me now suggest a second difference between the 
two schools which involves an interesting coincidence 
and now specially concerns us. As between Richardson 
and Fielding, it has been well said (by whom I cannot 
now remember) that Fielding tells you the time of day, 
whilst Richardson shows you how the watch is made- 
As indicating Fielding's method of conducting the action 
rather by concrete dialogue and event, than by those 
long analytic discussions of character in which Richard- 
son would fill whole pages with minute descriptions of 
the changing emotions of Clarissa upon reading a certain 
letter from Lovelace, pursuing the emotion as it were 
tear by tear, lachryinatim, — this characterization happily 
enough contrasts the analytic strength of Richardson 
with the synthetic strength of Fielding. 

Now a strikingly similar contrast obtains as between 
George Eliot and Charles Dickens. Every one will re- 
cognize as soon as it is mentioned the microscopic analy- 
sis of character throughout George Eliot as compared 
with the rapid cartoon-strokes by which Dickens brings 
out his figures. But the antithesis cannot be left here as 
between George Eliot and Dickens ; for it is the marvel 
of the former's art that, though so cool and analytic, it 
nevertheless sets before us perfect living flesh-and blood 
people by fusing the whole analytic process with a syn- 
thetic fire of the true poet's human sympathy. 

And here we come upon a farther difference between 
George Eliot and Dickens of which we shall have many 
and beautiful examples in the works we have to study. 
This is a large, poetic tolerance of times and things 
which, though worthy of condemnation, nevertheless ap- 



200 The English Novel 

\ 
peal to our sympathy because they once were closely 

bound with our fellow-men's daily life. For example, 
George Eliot writes often and lovingly about the England 
of the days before the Reform Bill, the careless, pictur- 
esque country-squire England ; not because she likes 
it, or thinks it better than the England of the present, 
but with much the same feeling with which a woman 
looks at the ragged, hob-nailed shoes of her boy who is 
gone — a boy who doubtless was often rude and diso- 
bedient and exasperating to the last degree, but who was 
her boy, 

A keen insight into this remarkable combination of 
the poetic tolerance with the sternness of scientific ac- 
curacy possessed by this remarkable woman — the most 
remarkable of all writers in this respect, we should say, 
except Shakspeare — is offered us in the opening lines of 
the first chapter of her first story, Amos Barton. (I love 
to look at this wonderful faculty in its germ). The chap- 
ter begins : " Shepperton Church was a very different 
looking building five-and-twenty years ago . . . Now 
there is a wide span of slated roof flanking the old 
steeple ; the windows are tall and symmetrical ; the outer 
doors are resplendent with oak graining, the inner doors 
reverentially noiseless Avith a garment of red baize ;" and 
we have a minute description of the church as it is. 
Then we have this turn in the next paragraph, altogether 
wonderful for a George Eliot who has been translating 
Strauss and Feuerbach, studying physics, Comtism and 
the like among the London agnostics, a fervent disciple 
of progress, a frequent contributor to the Westminster 
Feviciv ; " Immense improvement ! says the well-regu- 
lated mind, which unintermittingly rejoices in the new 
police . . . the penny-post, and all guaranties of human 
advancement, and has no moments when conservative 



And the Principle of its Development. 201 

reforming intellect takes a nap, while imagination does a 
little Toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear old 
brown, crumbling, picturesque inefficiency is everywhere 
giving place to spick-and-span, new-painted, new-var- 
nished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, 
plans, elevations and sections, but alas! no picture. 
Mine, I fear is not a well-regulated mind : it has an oc- 
casional tenderness for old abuses ; it lingers with a cer- 
tain fondness over the days of nasal clerks and top- 
booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades of 
vulgar errors." And it is worth while, if even for an 
aside, to notice in the same passage how this immense 
projection of herself out of herself into what we may 
fairly call her antipodes, is not only a matter of no 
strain, but from the very beginning is accompanied by 
that eye-twinkle between the lines which makes much 
of the very ruggedest writing of George Eliot's like a 
Virginia fence from between whose rails peep wild roses 
and morning-glories. 

This is in the next paragraph where after thus recalling 
the outsMe of Shepperton church, she exclaims : " Then 
inside what dear old quaintnesses ! which I began to look 
at with delight even when I was so crude a member of 
the congregation that my nurse found it necessary to 
provide for the reinforcement of my devotional patience 
by smuggling bread and butter into the sacred edifice." 
Or, a few lines before, a still more characteristic twinkle 
of the eye which in a flash carries our thoughts all the 
\ way from evolution to pure fun, when she describes the 
organ-player of the new Shepperton church as a rent- 
collector "differentiated by force of circumstances into 
an organist." Apropos of this use of the current scien- 
tific term "differentiation," it is worth while noting, as 
we pass, an instance of the extreme vagueness and 

9* 



202 The English Novel 



i>' 



caprice of current modern criticism. When George 
Eliot's Daniel Dcronda was printed in 1876, one of the 
most complacent English reviews criticized her expres- 
sion " dynamic power of" a woman's glance, which occurs 
in her first picture of Gwendolen Haiieth, as an inap- 
propriate use of scientific phraseology; and was imme- 
diately followed by a chorus of small voices discussing 
the matter with much minute learning, rather as evidence 
of George Eliot's decline from the proper artistic style. But 
here, as you have just seen, in the very first chapter of 
her first story, written twenty years before, scientific 
"differentiation" is made to work very effectively; and 
a few pages further on we have an even more striking 
instance in this passage : " This allusion to brandy-and- 
water suggested to Miss Gibbs the introduction of the 
liquor decanters now that the tea was cleared away; for 
in bucolic society five-and-twenty-years ago, the human 
animal of the male sex was understood to be perpet- 
ually athirst, and ' something to drink' was as necessary 
a 'condition of thought' as Time and Space." Other 
such happy uses of scientific phrases occur indeed 
throughout the whole of these first three stories, and 
form an integral part of that ever-brooding humor which 
fills with a quiet light all the darkest stories of George 
Eliot. 

But now, on the other hand, it is in strong contrast 
that we find her co-laborer Dickens, always growing 
furious (as his biographer describes), when the ante- 
reform days are mentioned, those days of rotten 
boroughs, etc., when, as Lord John Russell said, " a 
ruined mound sent two representatives to Parliament, 
three niches in a stone wall sent three representatives 
to parliament, and a park where no houses v/ere to be 
seen sent two representatives to Parliament." While 



And the Principle of its Development. 203 

George Eliot is indulging in the tender recollections of 
picturesqueness, etc., just given, Dickens is writing 
savage versions of the old ballad, TJie Fine Old EiiglisJi 
GenUeinan, in which he fiercely satirizes the old Tory- 
England : 

" I will sing you a new ballad " (he cries), " and I'll warrant it first- 
rate, 
Of the days of that old gentleman who had that old estate, 

The good old laws were garnished well with gibbets, whips and 

chains, 
With fine old English penalties and fine old English pains ; 
With rebel heads and seas of blood once hot in rebel veins: 
For all these things were requisite to guard the rich old gains 
Of the fine old English Tory times ; 
Soon may they come again ! 

The good old times for cutting throats that cried out in their need. 
The good old times for hunting men who held their father's creed, 
The good old times when William Pitt, as all good men agreed, 
Came down direct from Paradise at more than railroad speed ; 
Oh, the fine old English Tory times. 
When will they come again ! 

In those rare days the press was seldom known to snarl or bark. 
But sweetly sang of men in power like any tuneful lark ; 
Grave judges, too, to all their evil deeds were in the dark; 
And not a man in twenty score knew how to make his mark. 
Oh, the fine old English Tory times. 
Soon may they come again ! " 

In a word, the difference between Dickens' and George 
Eliot's powers is here typified : Dickens tends toward 
the satiric or destructive view of the old times ; George 
Eliot, with an even more burning intolerance of the 
essential evil, takes, on the other hand, the loving or 
constructive view. It is for this reason that George 
Eliot's work, as a whole, is so much finer than some of 
Dickens'. The great artist never can work in haste, 



204 The English Novel 

never in malice, never in even the sub-acid satiric mood 
of Thackeray; in love, and love only, can great work, 
work that not only pulls down, but builds, be done ; it is 
love, and love only, that is truly constructive in art. 

And here it seems profitable to contrast George Eliot's 
peculiar endowment as shown in these first stories, with 
that of Thackeray. Thackeray was accustomed to lament 
that " since the author of Tom Jones was buried, no 
writer of fiction among us has been permitted to depict 
to his utmost powers a man. . . . Society will not 
tolerate the natural in art." Under this yearning of 
Thackeray's after the supposed freedom of Fielding's 
time, lie at once a short-coming of love, a limitation of 
view and an actual fallacy of logic, which always kept 
Thackeray's work below the highest, and which formed 
the chief reason why I have been unable to place him 
here, along with Dickens and George Eliot. This short- 
coming and limitation still exist in our literature and 
criticism to such an extent that I can do no better ser- 
vice than by asking you to examine them. And I think 
I can illustrate the whole in the shortest manner by 
some considerations drawn from that familiar wonder of 
our times, the daily newspaper. Consider the printed 
matter which is brought daily to your breakfast table. 
The theory of the daily paper is that it is the history of 
the world for one day ; and let me here at once connect 
this illustration with the general argument by saying 
that Thackeray and his school, when they speak of draw- 
ing a man as he is — of the natural, etc., in art — would 
mean drawing a man as he appears in such a history as 
the daily newspaper gives us. But let us test this his- 
tory : let us examine, for instance, the telegraphic 
column in the morning journal. I have made a faithful 
transcript on the morning of this writing of every item 



And the Principle of its Development. 205 

in the news summary, involving the moral relation of 
man to man ; the result is as follows : one item concern- 
ing the assassination of the Czar; the recent war with 
the Boers in Africa ; the quarrel between Turkey and 
Greece; the rebellion in Armenia; the trouble about 
Candahar; of a workman in a lumber-camp in Michigan, 
who shot and killed his wife, twenty-two years old, yes- 
terday; of the confession of a man just taken from the 
West Virginia penitentiary, to having murdered an old 
man in Michigan, three years ago ; of the suicide of 
Mrs. Scott at Williamstown, Mississippi ; of the killing 
of King by Clark in a fight in Logan county, Kentucky, 
on Sunday; of how, about 10 o'clock last night, a cer- 
tain John Cram was called to the door of his house, 
near Chicago, and shot dead by William Seymour; 
of how young Mohr, thirteen years of age, died at the 
Charity Hospital, in Jersey City, yesterday, from the 
effects of a beating by his father; of how young Clasby 
was arrested at Richmond, Virginia, for stealing letters 
out of the mail bag; of how the miners of the Connells- 
ville, Pennsylvania, coke regions, the journeyman bakers 
of Montreal, Canada, the rubber-workers of New Bruns- 
wick, New Jersey, and the Journeyman Tailors' Union 
in Cincinnati, are all about to strike ; and finally, of how 
James Tolen,an insane wife-murderer, committed suicide 
in Minnesota, yesterday, by choking himself with a 
twisted sheet. These are all the items involving the 
moral relations of man to man contained in the history 
of the world for Tuesday, March 22d, 1881, as given by 
a journal noted for the extent and accuracy of its daily 
collection. 

Now suppose a picture were drawn of the moral con- 
dition of the United States from these data : how nearly 
would it represent the facts ? This so-called " history of 



2o6 The English Novel 

the world for one day," if you closely examine it, turns 
out to be, you observe, only a history of the world's 
crimes for one day. The world's virtues do not appear. 
It is true that Patrick Kelly murdered his wife yesterday; 
but then how many Kellys who came home, tired from 
work, and found the wife drunk and the children crying 
for bread, instead of murdering the whole family, with a 
rugged sigh drew the beastly woman's form into one 
corner, fumbled about the poor, dirty cupboard in 
another for crusts of bread, fed the crying youngsters 
after some rude fashion, and finally lay down with dumb 
heaviness to sleep off the evil of that day. It is true that 
Jones, the bank clerk, was yesterday exposed in a series 
of defalcations; but how many thousands of bank clerks 
on that same day resisted the strongest temptations to 
false entries and the allurements of private stock specu- 
lations. It is true that yesterday Mrs. Lighthead eloped 
with the music-teacher, leaving six children and a desolate 
husband; but how many thousands of Mrs. Heavyhearts 
spent the same day in nursing some drunken husband, 
who had long ago forfeited all love ; how many Milly 
Bartons were darning six children's stockings at five 
o'clock of that morning ; nay, what untold millions of 
faithful women made this same day a sort of paradise for 
husband and children. And finally, you have but to 
consider a moment that if it lay within the power of the 
diligent collector of items for the Associated Press 
despatches to gather together the virtuous, rather than 
the criminal actions of mankind, the virtuous would so 
far exceed the criminal as that no journal would find 
columns enough to put them in, so as to put a wholly 
different complexion upon matters. Now the use of this 
newspaper illustration in my present argument is this : 
I complain that Thackeray, and the Fielding school, in 



And the Principle of its Development. 207 

professing to paint men as they arc, really paint men 
only as they appear in some such necessarily one-sided 
representations as the newspaper history just described. 
And it is perfectly characteristic of the inherent weak- 
ness of Thackeray that he should so utterly fail to see 
the true significance underlying society's repudiation of 
his proposed natural picture. The least that such a 
repudiation could mean, would be that even if the picture 
were good in Fielding's time, it is bad now. It is beau- 
tiful, therefore, remembering Thackeray's great influence 
at the time when Scenes from Clerical Life were written, 
to find a woman, George Eliot, departing utterly out 
of that mood of hate or even of acidulous satire in which 
Thackeray so often worked, and in which, one may 
add, the world is seldom benefited, however skillful the 
work may be, departing from all that, deftly painting 
for us these pathetic Milly Bartons, and Mr. Gilfils, and 
Janet Dempsters, and Rev. Tryans, and arranging the 
whole into a picture which becomes epic because it is 
filled with the struggles of human personalities, dressed 
in whatever russet garb of clothing or of circumstances. 
Those who were at my first lecture on George Eliot 
will remember that we found the editor of Blackwood's 
Magazine on a certain autumn night in 1856, reading 
part of the MS. of Amos Barton, in his drawing room to 
Thackeray, and remarking to Thackeray, who had just 
come in late from dinner, that he had come upon a new 
author who seemed uncommonly like a first-class pas- 
senger ; it is significantly related that Thackeray said 
nothing, and evinced no further interest in it than civilly 
to say, sometime afterward, that he would have liked to 
hear more of it. In the light of the contrast I have just 
drawn, Thackeray's failure to be impressed seems natural 
enough, and becomes indeed all the more impressive, 



2o8 The English Novel 

when we compare it with the enthusiastic praise which 
Charles Dickens lavished upon this same work in the 
letter which you will remember I read from him. 

And here I come upon a further contrast between 
George Eliot and Dickens which I should be glad now 
to bring out as clearly appearing in these first three 
Scenes from Clerical Life before Adam Bede was written. 

This is her exquisite modernness in that intense feel- 
ing for personality, which I developed with so much 
care in my first six lectures, and her exquisite scientific 
precision in placing the personalities or characters of her 
works before the reader. 

All the world knows how Dickens puts a personality 
on his canvas : he always gives us a vividly descriptive 
line of facial curve, of dress, of form, of gesture and the 
like, which distinguishes a given character. Whenever 
we see this line we know the character so well that we 
are perfectly content that two rings for the eyes, a spot 
for the nose and a blur for the body may represent the 
rest; and we accept always with joy the rich mirthful- 
ness or pathetic matter with which Dickens manages 
to invest such hastily drawn figures. George Eliot's 
principle and method are completely opposite ; at the 
time of her first stories which we are now considering 
they were unique ; and the quietness with which she 
made a real epoch in all character-description is simply 
characteristic of the quietness of all her work. She 
showed for the first time that without approaching 
dangerously near to caricature as Dickens was often 
obliged to do, a loveable creature of actual flesh and 
blood could be drawn in a novel with all the advantage 
of completeness derivable from microscopic analysis, 
scientific precision, and moral intent ; and with abso- 
lutely none of the disadvantages, such as coldness, dead- 



And the Pri7iciple of its Development. 209 

ness and the like, which had caused all sorts of mere- 
tricious arts to be adopted by novelists in order to save 
the naturalness of a character. 

A couple of brief expressions from Janet's Repot- 
tance, the third of Scenes from Clerical Lfe show how 
intensely George Eliot felt upon this matter. At the 
end of Chapter X of that remarkable story, for in- 
stance, she says : "Our subtlest analysis of schools and 
sects must miss the essential truth unless it be lit up by 
the love that sees in all forms of human thought and 
work the life-and death struggles of separate human 
beings." And again in Chapter XXII : " Emotion, I fear, 
is obstinately irrational : it insists on caring for individu- 
als ; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative view 
of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives 
are a set-off against twelve miserable lives," leaving " a 
clear balance on the side of satisfaction . . . One must 
be a great philosopher," she adds, sardonically, "to 
have emerged into the serene air of pure intellect in 
which it is evident that individuals really exist for no 
other purpose than that abstractions may be drawn from 
them ; " (which is dangerously near, by the way, to a 
complete formula of the Emersonian doctrine which I 
had occasion to quote in my last lecture.) She contin- 
ues : " And so it comes to pass that for the man who 
knows sympathy because he has known sorrow, that old, 
old saying, about the joy of angels over the repentant 
sinner out-weighing their joy over the ninety-nine just, 
has a meaning that does not jar with the language of 
his own heart. It only tells him that for angels too 
there is a transcendent value in human pain which refuses 
to be settled by equations ; . . . that for angels too the 
misery of one casts so tremendous a shadow as to eclipse 
the bliss of ninety-nine." The beautiful personality who 



2IO The English Novel 

suggests this remark is Janet Dempster, the heroine of 
Janet's Repentance ; a tall, grand, beautiful girl who has 
married the witty Lawyer Dempster, and who, after a 
bitter married life of some years in which Dempster 
finally begins amusing himself by beating her, has come 
to share the customary wine decanter at table, and thus 
by insensible degrees to acquire the habit of taking 
wine against trouble. Presently a terrible catastrophe 
occurs ; she is thrust out of doors barefooted at mid- 
night, half clad, by her brutal husband, and told never 
to return. Finding lodgement with a friend next day, a 
whirlwind of necessity for complete spiritual re-adjust- 
ment shakes her. " She was sick," says George Eliot, 
"of that barren exhortation, 'Do right and keep a clear 
conscience and God will reward you, etc' She wanted 
strength to do right ; " and at this point the thought of 
Tryan, an unorthodox clergyman who had made a great 
stir in the village and whom she had been taught to despise, 
occurs to her. "She had often heard Mr. Tryan laughed 
at for being fond of great sinners ; she began to see a 
new meaning in those words ; he would perhaps under- 
stand her helplessness. If she could pour out her heart 
to him ! " Then here we have this keen glimpse into 
some curious relations of personality. " The impulse to 
confession almost always requires the presence of a fresh 
ear and a fresh heart ; and in our moments of spiritual 
need the man to whom we have no tie but our common 
nature seems nearer to us than mother, brother or friend. 
Our daily, familiar life is but a hiding of ourselves from 
each other behind a screen of trivial words and deeds; 
and those who sit with us at the same hearth are often 
the farthest off from the deep human soul within us, full 
of unspoken evil and unacted good." Nor can I ever 
read the pathetic scene in which Janet secures peace for 



And the Principle of its Development. 2 1 1 

her spirit and a practicable working theory for the rest of 
her active Hfe, without somehow being reminded of the 
second scene in Mrs. Browning's Dravia of Exile, prodi- 
giously different as that is from this in all external set- 
ting : — the scene where the figures of Adam and Eve 
are discovered at the extremity of the sword-glare, flying 
from Eden, and Adam begins : 

" Pausing a moment on the outer edge, 

Where the supernal sword-glare cuts in light 

The dark exteric^- desert, — hast thou strength 

Beloved, to look behind us to the gate ? 

Eve — Have I not strength to look up to thy face ?" 

This story of fancfs Repentance offers us, by the way, 
a strong note of modernness as between George Eliot 
and Shakspeare. Shakspeare has never drawn, so far as I 
know, a repentance of any sort. Surely, in the whole range 
of our life, no phenomenon can take more powerful hold 
upon the attention of the thinker than that of a human 
spirit suddenly, of its own free-will, turning the whole 
current of its love and desire from a certain direction 
into a direction entirely opposite ; so that from a small 
spiteful creature, enamored with all ugliness, we have a 
large, generous spirit, filled with the love of true love. 
In looking upon such a sight one seems to be startlingly 
near to the essential mystery of personality — to that 
hidden fountain of power not preceded, power not con- 
ditioned, which probably gives man his only real con- 
ception of Divine power, or power acting for itself It 
would be wonderful that the subtleties of human passion 
comprehended in the situation of repentance had not 
attracted Shakspeare's imagination, if one did not re- 
member that the developing personality of man was then 
only coming into literature. The only apparent change 



212 The English Novel 

of character of this sort in Shakspeare which I recall is 
that of the young king Henry V. leaving Falstaff and 
his other gross companions for the steadier matters of 
war and government ; but the soliloquy of Prince Hal 
in the very first act of King Henry IV. precludes all 
idea of repentance here, by showing that at the outset 
his heart is not in the jolly pranks, but that he is calcu- 
latingly ambitious from the beginning ; and his whole 
apparent dissipation is but a scheme to enhance his 
future glory. In the first act of Henry IV. (first part), 
when the plot is made to rob the carriers, at the end of 
Scene II., exeunt all but Prince Hal, who soliloquizes 

thus : 

" I know you all, and will awhile uphold 
The unyoked humor of your idleness : 
Yet herein will I imitate the sun, 
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds 
To smother up his beauty from the world, 
That, when he please again to be himself, 
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at 
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists 
Of vapors that did seem to strangle him. 
... So when this loose behaviour I throw off 
And pay the debt I never promised, 
By how much better than my word I am, 
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes ; 
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground. 
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, 
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes 
Than that which had no foil to set it off. 
I'll so offend to make offense a skill. 
Redeeming time when men think least I will." 

Here the stream of his love is from the beginning and 
always towards ambition ; there is never any turn at all, 
and Prince Hal's assumption of the grace reformation, 
as applied to such a career of deliberate acting, is merely 
a piece of naive complacency. 



And the Prhiciplc jof its Development. 2 1 3 

Let us now go further and say that with this reverence 
for personahty as to the ultimate important fact of human 
existence, George Ehot wonderfully escapes certain com- 
plexities due to the difference between what a man is, 
really, and what he seems to be to his fellows. Perhaps 
I may most easily specify these complexities by asking 
you to recall the scene in one of Dr. Holmes' Breakfast- 
Table series, where the Professor laboriously expounds 
to the young man called John that there are really three 
of him, to wit : John, as he appears to his neighbors ; 
John, as he appears to himself; and John, as he really is. 

In George Eliot's Theophrastiis Such, one finds ex- 
plicit mention of the trouble that had been caused to 
her by two of these : " With all possible study of my- 
self," she says in the first chapter. . . "I am obliged to 
recognize that while there are secrets in one unguessed by 
others, these others have certain items of knowledge 
about the extent of my powers and the figure I make 
with them which, in turn, are secrets unguessed by me. . . 
Thus . . . O fellow-men ! if I trace with curious interest 
your labyrinthine self-delusions ... it is not that I feel 
myself aloof from you : the more intimately I seem to 
discern your weaknesses the stronger to me is the proof 
I share them . . . No man can know his brother simply as 
a spectator. Dear blunderers, I am one of you." 

Perhaps nothing less than this underlying reverence 
for all manner of personality could have produced this 
first chapter of Adam Bedc. "With this drop of ink," 
she says at starting, "I will show you the roomy work- 
shop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder in 
the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the i8th of 
June, in the year of our Lord 1799." I can never read 
this opening of the famous carpenter's shop without 
indulging myself for a moment in the wish that this 



214 ^^*^ English Novel 

same marvellous eye might have dwelt upon a certain 
carpenter's shop I wot of, on some i8th of June, in the 
year of our Lord 25. What would we not give for 
such a picture of the work-shop of that master-builder 
and of the central figure in it as is here given us of the 
old English room ringing with the song of Adam Bede. 
Perhaps we could come upon no clearer proof of that 
modernness of personality which I have been advocating 
than this very fact of our complete ignorance as to the 
physical person of Christ. One asks one's self, how comes 
it never to have occurred to St. Matthew, nor St. Mark, 
nor St. Luke, nor St. John to tell us what manner of 
man this was — what stature, what complexion, what 
color of eye and hair, what shape of hand and foot. A 
natural instinct arising at the very outset of the descrip- 
tive effort would have caused a modern to acquaint us 
with these and many like particulars. 

It is adv^ancing upon the same line of thought to note 
that, here, in this opening of Adam Bcdc, not only are 
the men marked off and differentiated for our physical 
eye, but the very first personality described is that of 
a dog, and this is subtly done : " On a heap of soft 
shavings a rough gray shepherd-dog had made himself 
a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his 
fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a 
glance at the tallest of the five workmen, who was carv- 
ing a shield in the centre of a wooden mantel-piece." 
This dog is our friend Gyp, who emerges on several 
occasions through Adam Bcdc. Gyp is only one of a 
number of genuine creations in animal character which 
show the modernness of George Eliot and Charles 
Dickens, and make them especially dear. How, indeed, 
could society get along without that famous cock in 
Adam Bcde, who, as George Eliot records, was accus- 



And the Principle of its Development. 2 1 5 

tomed to crow as if the sun was rising on purpose to 
hear him ! And I wish here to place upon the roll of 
fame, also, a certain cock who entered literature about 
this time in a series of delicious papers called Shy Neigh- 
borhoods. In these Charles Dickens gave some account, 
among many other notable but unnoted things, of 
several families of fowls in which he had become, as it 
were, intimate during his walks about outlying London. 
One of these was a reduced family of Bantams whom he 
was accustomed to find crowding together in the side 
entry of a pawnbroker's shop. Another was a family 
of Dorkings, who regularly spent their evenings in some- 
what riotous company at a certain tavern near the Hay- 
market, and seldom went to bed before two in the 
morning. 

My particular immortal, however, was a member of 
the following family : I quote from Dickens here : — " But 
the family I am best acquainted with reside in the densest 
parts of Bethnal-Green. Their abstraction from the 
objects amongst which they live, or rather their convic- 
tion that those objects have all come into existence into 
express subservience to fowls has so enchanted me that 
I have made them the subject of many journeys at 
divers hours. . . The leading lady " is " an aged person- 
age afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of 
quills that give her the appearance of a bundle of office 
pens. When a railway goods-van that would crush an 
elephant comes round the corner, tearing over these 
fowls, they emerge unharmed from under the horses 
perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a passing 
property in the air which may have left something to eat 
behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles 
and saucepans, and fragments of bonnets as a kind of 
meteoric discharge for fowls to peck at. . . Gaslight comes 



21 6 The English Novel 

quite as natural to them as any other light; and I have 
more than a suspicion that in the minds of the two lords^ 
the early public house at the corner has superseded the 
sun. They always begin to crow when the public-house 
shutters begin to be taken down : and they salute the 
Pot-boy when he appears to perform that duty as 
if he were Phoebus in person." And alongside these 
two cocks I must place a hen whom I find teaching a 
wise and beautiful lesson to the last man in the world 
you would suspect as accessible to influences from any 
such direction. This was Thomas Carlyle. Among his 
just-published Reminiscences I find the following entry 
from the earlier dyspeptic times, which seems impossible 
when we remember the well-known story — true, as I 
know — how, after Thomas Carlyle and his wife had set- 
tled at Chelsea, London, and the crowing of the neigh- 
borhood cocks had long kept him in martyrdom, Mrs, 
Carlyle planned and carried out the most brilliant cam- 
paign of her life, in the course of which she succeeded 
in purchasing or otherwise suppressing every cock within 
hearing distance. But this entry is long before. 

" Another morning, what was wholesome and better, 
happening to notice, as I stood looking out on the bit 
of green under my bedroom window, a trim and rather 
pretty hen actively paddling about and picking up what 
food might be discoverable, 'See/ I said to myself; 
Mook, thou fool! Here is a two-legged creature with 
scarcely half a thimbleful of poor brains ; thou call'st 
thyself a man with nobody knows how much brain, and 
reason dwelling in it ; and behold how the one life is 
regulated and how the other ! In God's name concen- 
trate, collect whatever of reason thou hast, and direct it on 
the one thing needful.' Irving, when we did get into 
intimate dialogue, was affectionate to me as ever, and had 



And the Principle of its Devclop77ient. 2 1 7 

always to the end a great deal of sense and insight into 
things about him, but he could not much help me ; how 
could anybody but myself? By degrees I was doing so, 
taking counsel of that symbolic Hen." 

In George Eliot all the domestic animals are true 
neighbors and are brought within the Master's exhorta- 
tion : "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," by the 
tenderness and deep humor with which she treats them. 
This same Gyp, who is honored with first place among the 
characters described in the carpenter's shop, is contin- 
ually doing something charming throughout Adam Bede, 
In Janefs Repentance dear old Mr. Jerome comes down 
the road on his roan mare, "shaking the bridle and 
tickling her flank with the whip as usual, though there 
was a perfect mutual understanding that she was not to 
quicken her pace ; " and everywhere I find those touches 
of true sympathy with the dumb brutes, such as only 
earnest souls or great geniuses are capable of 

Somehow — I cannot now rem-ember how — a picture was 
fastened upon my mind in childhood, which I always 
recall with pleasure : it is the figure of man emerging 
from the dark of barbarism attended by his friends the 
horse, the cow, the chicken and the dog. George Eliot's 
animal-painting brings always this picture before me. 

In April, i860, appeared George Eliot's second great 
novel, The Mill on the Floss. This book, in some re- 
spects otherwise her greatest work, possesses a quite 
extraordinary interest for us now in the circumstance 
that a large number of traits in the description of the 
heroine, Maggie Tulliver, are unquestionably traits of 
George Eliot herself, and the autobiographic character 
of the book has been avowed by her best friends. I pro- 
pose, therefore, in the next lecture, to read some pas- 
sages from T/ie Milt on tJie Floss, in which I may 
10 



2i8 The English Novel 

have the pleasure of letting this great soul speak for 
herself with little comment from me, except that I wish 
to compare the figure of Maggie TuUiver, specially, with 
that of Aurora Leigh, in the light of the remarkable de- 
velopment of womanhood, both in real life and in fiction 
which arrays itself before us when we think only of 
what we may call the Victorian women ; that is, of the 
queen herself. Sister Dora, Florence Nightingale, Ida in 
Tennyson's Princess, Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte and 
her sisters, Mrs. Browning, with her Eve and Catarina 
and Aurora Leigh, and George Eliot, with her creations- 
I shall thus make a much more extensive study of TJie 
Mill on the Floss than of either of the four works which 
preceded it. It is hard to leave Adam Bede, and Dinah 
Morris and Bartle Massey, and Mrs. Poyser, but I must 
select; and I have thought this particularly profitable 
because no criticism that I have yet seen of George Eliot 
does the least justice to the enormous, the simply unique 
equipment with which she comes into English fiction, or 
in the least prepares the reader for those extraordinary 
revolutions which she has wrought with such demure 
quietness that unless pointed out by some diligent pro- 
fessional student, no ordinary observer would be apt to 
notice them. Above all have I done this because it is 
my deep conviction that we can find more religion in 
George Eliot's words than she herself dreamed she was 
putting there, and a clearer faith for us than she ever 
formulated for herself; a strange and solemn result, but 
one not without parallel ; for Mrs. Browning's words of 
Lucretius in The J^ision of Poets partly apply here : 

" Lucretius, nobler than his mood ! 
Who dropped his plummet down the broad 
Deep Universe, and said ' No God," 
Findinjr no bottom ! He denied 



And the Pri7iciple of its Development. 2 1 9 



Divinely the divine, and died 
Chief-poet on the Tiber-side 
By grace of God ! His face is stern 
As one compelled, in spite of scorn, 
To teach a truth he could not learn." 



220 The Englisli Novel 



X. 



While it is true that the pubhcation of Adam Bede 
enables us — as stated in the last lecture — to fix George 
Eliot as already at the head of English novel writers in 
1859, I should add that the effect of the book was not so 
well defined upon the public of that day. The work was 
not an immediate popular success ; and even some of the 
authoritative critics, instead of recognizing its greatness 
with generosity, went pottering about to find what ex- 
isting authors this new one had most likely drawn her 
inspiration from. 

But The Mill on the Floss, which appeared in April, 
i860, together with some strong and generous reviews 
of Adam Bede, which had meantime appeared in Black- 
wood's Magazine and in the London Times, quickly car- 
ried away the last vestige of this suspense, and The Mill 
on the Floss presently won for itself a popular audience 
and loving appreciation which appear to have been very 
gratifying to George Eliot herself This circumstance 
alone would make the book an interesting one for our 
present special study ; but the interest is greatly height- 
ened by the fact — a fact which I find most positively 
stated by those who most intimately knew her — that the 
picture of girlhood which occupies so large a portion of 
the first part of the book, is, in many particulars, 
autobiographic. The title originally chosen for this 
work by George Eliot was Sister Maggie, from which 
we may judge the prominence she intended to give to 
the character of Maggie Tulliver. After the book was 
220 



A?id the Principle of its Development. 221 

finished, however, this title was felt to be, for several 
reasons, insufficient. It was a happy thought of Mr. 
Blackwood's to call the book J lie Mill on the Floss ; and 
George Eliot immediately adopted his suggestion to 
that effect. There is, too, a third reason why this par- 
ticular work offers some peculiar contributions to the 
main lines of thought upon which these lectures have 
been built. As I go on to read a page here and there 
merely by way of recalling the book and the actual 
style to you, you will presently find that the interest of 
the whole has for the time concentrated itself upon the 
single figure of a little wayward English girl some nine 
years old, perhaps alone in a garret in some fit of child- 
ish passion, accusing the Divine order of things as to 
its justice or mercy, crudely and inarticulately enough 
yet quite as keenly after all as our PromctJieus, either ac- 
cording to yEschylus or Shelley. As I pass along rapidly 
bringing back to you these pictures of Maggie's girl- 
ish despairs, I beg you to recall the first scenes which 
were set before you from the Prometheus, to bear those 
in mind along with these, to note how ^schylus — whom 
we have agreed to consider as a literary prototype, 
occupying much the same relation to his age as George 
Eliot does to ours — in stretching Prometheus upon the 
bare Caucasian rock and lacerating him with the just 
lightnings of outraged Fate, is at bottom only studying 
with a ruder apparatus the same phenomena which 
George Eliot is here unfolding before us in the micro- 
scopic struggles of the little English girl ; and I ask 
you particularly to observe how, here, as we have so 
many times found before, the enormous advance from 
Prometheus to Maggie Tulliver — from ^Eschylus to 
George Eliot — is summed up in the fact that while per- 
sonality in .^schylus' time had got no further than the 



222 The English Novel 

conception of a universe in which justice is the organic 
idea, in George P^liot's time it has arrived at the concep- 
tion of a universe in which love is the organic idea ; and 
that it is precisely upon the stimulus of this new growth 
of individualism that George Eliot's readers crowd up 
with interest to share the tiny woes of insignificant 
Maggie Tulliver, while ^schylus, in order to assemble 
an interested audience, must have his Jove, his Titans, 
his earthquakes, his mysticism, and the blackness of in- 
conclusive Fate withal. 

Everyone remembers a sense of mightiness in this 
opening chapter of TJic Mill on the Floss, where the 
great river Floss, thick with heavy-laden ships, sweeps 
down to the sea by the red-roofed town of St. Ogg's. 
Remembering how we found that the first personality 
described in Adam Bcde was that of a shepherd-dog, 
here, too, we find that the first prominent figures in our 
landscape are those of animals. The author is indulg- 
ing in a sort of dreamy prelude of reminiscences, and 
in describing Dorlcote Mill, Maggie's home, says : 

" The rush of the water and the booming of the mill bring a 
dreamy deafness which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the 
scene. They are hke a great curtain of sounds shutting one out 
from the world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the 
huge covered wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That 
honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner getting sadly dry in the 
oven at this late hour ; but he will not touch it until he has fed his 
horses — the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, 
are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, 
that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner, as if 
they needed that hint ! See how they stretch their shoulders up 
the slope to the bridge, with all the more energy because they are 
so near home. Look at their grand, shaggy feet, that seem to 
grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks bowed 
under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling 
haunches ! I should like well to hear them neigh over their 



And the Pnnciple of its Development. 223 

hardly-earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks 
freed from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the 
muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go 
again at a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered wagon dis- 
appears at a turning behind the trees." 

Remembering how we have agreed that the author's 
comments in the modern novel, acquainting us with such 
parts of the action as could not be naturally or conven- 
iently brought upon the stage, might be profitably 
regarded as a development of certain well-known func- 
tions of the chorus in the Greek drama — we have here a 
quite palpable instance of the necessity for such develop- 
ment ; how otherwise, could we be let into the inner 
emotions of farm-horses so genially as in this charming 
passage ? 

In Chapter II. we are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. 
Tulliver talking by the fire in the left-hand corner of 
their cosy English home, and I must read a page or two 
of their conversation before bringing Maggie on the stage, 
if only to show the intense individuality of the latter by 
making the reader wonder how such an individualism 
could ever have been evolved from any such precedent 
conditions as those of Mr. and Mrs Tulliver. " What I 
want, you know," said Mr. Tulliver, — 

"What I want is to give Tom a good eddication — an eddication 
as'Il be bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I 
gave notice for him to leave th ' academy at Ladyday. I mean to 
put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. The two 
years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough, if I'd meant to 
make a miller and farmer of him, for he's had a fine sight 
more schoolin' nor /ever got : all the learnin' my father ever paid 
for was a bit o' birch at one end and the alphabet at th' other. 
But I should like Tom to be a bit of a schoUard, so as he might be 
up to the tricks o' these fellows a stalk fine and write with a flourish. 
It 'ud be a help to me wi' these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and 



2 24 The English Novel 

things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad — I 
should be sorry for him to be a raskell — but a sort o' en- 
gineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Ri- 
ley, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and 
no out-lay, only for a big watch-chain, and a high stool. 
They're putty nigh all one, and they're not far off being even 
wi' the law, / believe ; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i' the 
face as hard as one cat looks another. He's none frightened 
at him." 

Mr. Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blonde comely wo- 
man, in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it 
was since fan-shaped caps were worn — they must be so near 
coming in again. At that time, when Mrs. Tulliver was 
nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg's, and considered sweet 
things). 

"Well, Mr. Tulliver, you know best; Tve no objections. But 
hadn't I better kill a couple o' fowl and have th' aunts and 
uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what sister 
Glegg and sister Pullet have got to say about it ? There's a 
couple o' fowl wants killing ! " 

" You may kill every fowl i' the yard, if you like, Bessy ; but 
I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I'm to do wi' my own 
lad," said Mr. Tulliver, defiantly. 

"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Tulliver, shocked at this san- 
guinary rhetoric, "how can you talk so, Mr. Tulliver? But 
it's your way to speak disrespectful o' my family ; and sis- 
ter Glegg throws all the blame upo' me, though I'm sure 
I'm as innocent as the babe unborn. For nobody's ever 
heard nie say as it wasn't lucky for my children to have 
aunts and uncles as can live independent. However, if Tom's 
to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can 
wash him and mend him; else he might as well have calico 
as linen, for they'd be one as yallcr as th' other before 
they'd been washed half a dozen times. And then, when 
the box is goin' backards and forrards, I could send the 
lad a cake, or a pork-pie or an apple ; for he can do with 
an extra bit, bless him, whether they stint him at the meals 
or no. My children can eat as much victuals as most, thank 
God." 

Mr. Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands 
into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion 



And the Principle of its Development. 225 

there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said 
"I know what I'll do. I'll talk it over \vi' Riley : he's coming to- 
morrow t' arbitrate about the dam." 

" Well, Mr. Tulliver, I've put the sheets out for the best bed, 
and Kezia's got 'em hanging at the fire. They aren't the best 
sheets, but they're good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who 
he will ; for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent buy- 
ing 'em, only they'll do to lay us out in. An' if you was to die to- 
morrow, Mr. Tulliver, they're mangled beautiful, an' all ready, 'an 
smell o' lavender, as it 'ud be a pleasure to lay them out; an' they 
lie at the left-hand corner o' the big oaken chest, at the back — not 
as I should trust any body to look 'em out but myself." 

In the next chapter, Mr. Tulliver at night, over a cosy- 
glass of brandy-and-water, is discussing with Riley the 
momentous question of a school for Tom. Mrs. Tulliver 
is out of the room upon household cares, and Maggie is 
off on a low stool close by the fire, apparently buried in 
a large book that is open on her lap, but betraying her 
interest in the conversation by occasionally shaking back 
her heavy hair and looking up with gleaming eyes when 
Tom's name is mentioned. Presently Maggie, in an 
agitated outburst on Tom's behalf, drops the book she 
has been reading. Mr. Riley picks it up, and here we have 
a glimpse at the kind of food which nourishes Maggie's 
infant mind. Mr. Riley calls out, "Come, come and tell 
me something about this book ; here are some pictures — 
I want to know what they mean." 

Maggie, with deepening color, went without hesitation 
to Mr. Riley's elbow, and looked over the book, eagerly 
seizing one corner, and tossing back her mane, while 
she said: 

"Oh, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dreadful picture, 
isn't it? But I can't help looking at it. That old woman in the 
water 's a witch — they've put her in to find out whether she's a 
witch or no, and if she swims she's a witch, and if she's drowned 

10* 



2 26 The English Novel 

— and killed, you know — she's innocent, and not a witch, but 
only a poor silly old woman. But what good would it do her then, 
you know, when she was drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go to 
heaven, and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful 
blacksmith, with his arms akimbo, laughing — oh, isn't he ugly? 
I'll tell you what he is. He's the devil, really^ (here Maggie's 
voice became louder and more emphatic), " and not a right black- 
smith ; for the devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks 
about and sets people doing wicked things, and he's oftener in the 
shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people 
saw he was the devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run away, and 
he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased." 

Mr. TuUiver had listened to this exposition of Maggie's with 
petrifying wonder. 

" Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on ?" he burst 
out, at last. 

" The History of the Devil, by Daniel Defoe ; not quite the 
right book for a little girl," said Mr. Riley. " How came it among 
your books, Tulliver ? '' 

Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said, 
" Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Partridge's sale. They 
was all bound alike — it's a good binding, you see — and I thought 
they'd be all good books. There's Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living 
and Dying among 'em; I read in it often of a Sunday," (Mr. 
Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer because 
his name was Jeremy), " and there's a lot more of 'em, sermons 
mostly, I think; but they've all got the same covers, and I 
thought they were all o' one sample, as you may say. But it 
seems one mustn't judge by th' outside. This is a puzzling world." 

"Well," said Mr. Riley, in an admonitory patronizing tone, as 
he patted Maggie on the head, '' I advise you to put by the His- 
tory of the Devil, and read some prettier book. Have you no pret- 
tier books ? " 

" Oh, yes," said Maggie, reviving a little in the desire to vindi- 
cate the variety of her reading ; " I know the reading in this book 
isn't pretty, but I like to look at the pictures, and I make stories to 
the pictures out of my own head, you know. But I've got ^sop's 
Fables, and a book about kangaroos and things, and the Pil- 
grim's Progress. "... 

"Ah ! a beautiful book," said Mr. Riley : " you can't read a 
better." 



And the Principle of its Development. 227 

"Well, but there's a great deal about the devil in that," said 
Maggie, triumphantly, "and I'll show you the picture of him in 
his true shape, as he fought with Christian." 

Maggie ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on 
a chair, and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old 
copy of Bunyan, which opened at once, without the least trouble 
of search, at the picture she wanted. 

" Here he is," she said, running back to Mr. Riley, "and Tom 
colored him fof me with his paints when he was at home last holi- 
days — the body all black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, 
because he's all fire inside, .and it shines out at his eyes." 

" Go, go !" said Mr. Tulliver, peremptorily, beginning to feel 
rather uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal ap- 
pearance of a being powerful enough to create lawyers ; " shut up 
the book, and let's hear no more o' such talk. It is as I thought — 
the child 'uU learn more mischief nor good wi' the books. Go — 
go and see after your mother." 

And here are further various hints of Maggie's ways in 
which we find clues to many outbursts of her later life. 

" It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she was not al- 
lowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Tom 
home from the academy ; but tlie morning was too wet, Mrs. Tul- 
liver said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie 
took the opposite view very strongly ; and it was a direct conse- 
quence of this difference of opinion that, when her mother was in 
the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop, Maggie suddenly 
rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of 
water standing near, in the vindictive determination that there 
should be no more chance of curls that day. 

" Maggie, Maggie," exclaimed Mrs. Tulliver, sitting stout and 
helpless with the brushes on her lap, " what is to become of you if 
you're so naughty ? I'll tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pul- 
let when they come next week, and they'll never love you any 
more. Oh dear, oh dear, look at your clean pinafore, wet from top 
to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as I've got such 
a child — they'll think I've done summat wicked." 

Before this remonstrance was finished Maggie was already out 
of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that ran under 



2 28 The English Novel 

the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks 
as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic 
was Maggie's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was 
not too cold ; here she fretted out all her ill-humors, and talked 
aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm eaten shelves, and 
the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs ; and here she kept a 
Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the 
trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest 
of eyes above the reddest of cheeks, but was now entirely defaced 
by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into 
the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie's nine years of 
earthly struggle, that luxury of vengeance having been suggested 
to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. 
The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, 
for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Glegg." 

But a ray of sunshine on the window of the garret 
proves too much for her; she dances down stairs, and 
after a wild whirl in the sunshine with Yap the terrier 
goes up into the mill for a talk with Luke the miller. 

" Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the mill, 
and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft white- 
ness that made her dark eyes flash out with a new fire. The reso- 
lute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim 
delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force — the 
meal forever pouring, pouring — the fine white powder softening all 
surfaces, and making the very spider-nets look like a fancy lace- 
work — the sweet, pure scent of the meal — all helped to make 
Maggie feel that the mill was a little world apart from her outside, 
everyday life. The spiders were especially a subject of specula- 
tion with her. She wondered if they had any relations outside the 
mill, for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their 
family intercourse — a flat and floury spider, accustomed to take 
his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin's table 
where the fly was an nature! ; and the lady-spiders must be 
mutually shocked at each other's appearance. But the part of the 
mill she liked best was the topmost story — the corn-hutch, where 
there were the great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and 
slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recre- 
ation as she conversed with Luke, to whom she was very com- 



And the Principle of its Development. 229 

municative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as 
her father did. Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her posi- 
tion with him on the present occasion, for, as she sat sliding on 
the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at 
that shrill pitch which was requisite in mill society, 

' I think you never read any book but the Bible — did you Luke ? ' 

' Nay, miss — an' not much o' that,' said Luke, with great frank- 
ness. ' I'm no reader, I ain't.' 

• But if I lent you one of my books, Luke ? I've not got any 
very pretty books that would be easy for you to read, but there's 
Pug s Tour of Europe — that would tell you all about the dif- 
ferent sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand 
the reading, the pictures would help you — they show the looks and 
the ways of the people, and what they do. There are the Dutch- 
men, very fat, and smoking, you know — and one sitting on a 
barrel.' 

' Nay, miss, I've no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much 
good i' knowin' about them.' 

'But they're our fellow-creatures, Luke — we ought to know 
about our fellow-creatures.' 

' Not much o* fellow-creatures, I think, miss ; all I know — my 
old master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, ' If e'er I 
sow my wheat wi'out brinin,' I'm a Dutchman,' says he ; an' that 
war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. 
Nay, nay, I arn't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's 
fools enoo — an' rogues enoo — wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em.' 

' Oh, well,' said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke's unexpectedly 
decided views about Dutchmen, 'perhaps you would like Ani- 
mated Nature better ; that's not Dutchmen, you know, but ele- 
phants, and kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sunfish, and a 
bird sitting on its tail — I forget its name. There are countries full 
of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. 
Shouldn't you like to know about them, Luke ?' 

' Nay, miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn — I can't 
do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what 
brings folks to the gallows — knowin' every thing but what they'n 
got to get their bread by — An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's 
printed i' the books ; them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men 
cry i' the streets.' 

But these are idyllic hours ; presently the afternoon 



230 The English Novel 

comes, Tom arrives, Maggie has an hour of rapturous 
happiness over him and a new fishing-Hne which he has 
brought her, to be hers all by herself; and then comes 
tragedy. Tom learns from Maggie the death of certain 
rabbits which he had left in her charge and which, as 
might have been expected, she had forgotten to feed. 
Here follows a harrowing scene of reproaches from Tom, 
of pleadings for forgiveness from Maggie, until finally 
Tom appears to close the door of mercy. He sternly 
insists: "Last holidays you licked the paint off my 
lozenge box, and the holidays before you let the boat 
drag my fish-line down when I set you to watch it, and 
you pushed your head through my kite all for nothing." 
"But I didn't mean," said Maggie; "I couldn't help it." 
"Yes you could," said Tom, " if you'd minded what you 
were doing . . . And you shan't go fishing with me to- 
morrow." With this terrible conclusion Tom runs off to 
the mill, while the heart broken Maggie creeps up to her 
attic, lays her head against the worm-eaten shelf and 
abandons herself to misery. 

In the scene which I now read, howbeit planned upon 
so small a scale, the absolute insufficiency of justice to 
give final satisfaction to human hearts as now constituted, 
and the inexorable necessity of love for such satisfaction 
appear quite as plainly as if the canvas were of Prome- 
thean dimensions. 

" Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it 
must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not 
thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve 
herself— hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all night ; and 
then they would all be frightened, and Tom would be sorry. Thus 
Maggie thought in the pride of her heart, as she crept behind the 
tub ; but presently she began to cry again at the idea that they 
didn't mind her being there. If she went down again to Tom 
now, would he forgive her ? Perhaps her father would be there, 



And the Principle of its Develop7ne7it. 231 

and he would take her part. But, then she wanted Tom to for- 
give her because he loved her, and not because his father told him_ 
No, she would never go down if Tom didn't come to fetch her. 
This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes be- 
hind the tub ; but then the need of being loved, the strongest need 
in poor Maggie's nature, began to wrestle with her pride, and soon 
threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long 
attic, but just then she heard a quick footstep on the stairs." 

In point of fact Tom has been sent from the tea-table 
for her, and mounts the attic munching a great piece of 
plum-cake, 

..." He went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plum- 
cake, and not intending to retrieve Maggie's punishment, which 
was no more than she deserved. Tom was only thirteen, and had 
no decided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding them for 
the most part as open questions, but he was particularly clear and 
positive on one point, namely, that he would punish every body 
who deserved it ; why, he wouldn't have minded bemg punished 
himself, if he deserved ; but then he never did deserve it. 

It was Tom's step, then, that Maggie heard on the stairs when 
her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going 
down with her swollen eyes and disheveled hair to beg for pity- 
At least her father would stroke her head and say, ' Never mind, 
my wench.' It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love — this 
hunger of the heart — as peremptory as that other hunger by which 
Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the 
world. 

But she knew Tom's step, and her heart began to beat violently 
with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of 
the stairs and said, ' Maggie, you're to come down.' But she 
rushed to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, ' Oh, Tom, 
please forgive me — I can't bear it — I will always be good — always 
remember things — do love me — please, dear Tom ? ' 

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart 
when we have quarreled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, 
and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firm- 
ness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no 
longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness of 
the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like 



232 The English Novel 

members of a highly civiUzed society. Maggie and Tom were still 
very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek 
against his, and kiss his ear in a random, sobbing way ; and there 
were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to Mag- 
gie's fondling, so that he behaved with a weakness quite inconsis- 
tent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved ; he 
actually began to kiss her in return, and say, 

' Don't cry, then, Maggie — here, eat a bit o' cake.' Maggie's 
sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and 
bit a piece ; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company ; and they 
ate together, and rubbed each other's cheeks, and brows, and 
noses together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to 
two friendly ponies. 

' Come, along, Maggie, and have tea,' said Tom at last, when 
there was no more cake except what was down stairs." 

Various points of contrast lead me to cite some types 
of character which appear to offer instructive compar- 
isons with this picture of the healthy English boy and 
girl. Take for example this portrait of the modern 
American boy given us by Mr. Henry James, Jr., in his 
Daisy Miller, which was, I believe, the work that first 
brought him into fame. The scene is in Europe. A 
gentleman is seated in the garden of a hotel at Geneva, 
smoking his cigarette after breakfast. 

" Presently a small boy cam.e walking along the path — an urchin 
of nine or ten. The child, who was diminutive for his years, had 
an aged expression of countenance, a pale complexion, and sharp 
little features. He was dressed in Knickerbockers, with red stock- 
ings, which displayed his poor little spindleshanks ; he also wore a 
brilliant red cravat. He carried in his hand a long alpenstock, the 
sharp point of which he thrust into everything that he approached 
— the flower-beds, the garden benches, the trains of the ladies' 
dresses. In front of Winterbourne he paused, looking at him with 
a pair of bright penetrating little eyes. 

' Will you give me a lump of sugar ? ' he asked in a sharp, hard 
little voice — a voice immature, and yet, somehow, not young. 

Winterbourne glanced at the small table near him on which his 
coffee-service rested, and saw that several morsels of sugar re- 



And the Principle of its Development. 233 

mained. ' Yes, you may take one,' he answered, 'but I don't 
think sugar is good for little boys.' 

This little boy slipped forward and carefully selected three of 
the coveted fragments, two of which he buried in the pocket of his 
Knickerbockers, depositing the other as promptly in another place. 
He poked his alpenstock lance-fashion into Winterbourne's bench, 
and tried to crack the lump of sugar with his teeth. 

' Oh, blazes ; it 's har-r-d ! ' he exlaimed, pronouncing the adjec- 
tive in a peculiar manner. 

Winterbourne had immediately perceived that he might have 
the honor of claiming him as a fellow-countryman. ' Take care 
you don't hurt your teeth,' he said paternally. 

' I have n't got any teeth to hurt. They have all come out. I 
have only got seven teeth. My mother counted them last night, 
and one came out right afterwards. She said she'd slap me if 
any more came out. I can't help it. It's this old Europe, It's 
the climate that makes them come out. In America they didn't 
come out. It's these hotels.' 

Winterbourne was much amused. ' If you eat three lumps of 
sugar, your mother will certainly slap you,' he said. 

' She's got to give me some candy, then,' rejoined his young in- 
terlocutor. ' I can't git any candy here — any American candy. 
American candy's the best candy.' 

' And are American boys the best little boys ? ' asked Winter- 
bourne. 

' I don't know. I'm an American boy,' said the child. 

' I see you are one of the best ! ' laughed Winterbourne. 

'Are you an American man?' pursued this vivacious infant- 
And then on Winterbourne's affirmative reply,— 'American men 
are the best,' he declared." 

On the other hand compare this intense, dark-eyed 
Maggie in her garret and with her flaming ways, with 
Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh." Aurora Leigh, too, 
has her garret, and doubtless her intensity too, blossoms 
in that congenial dark and lonesomeness. I read a few 
lines from Book ist by way of reminder. 

" Books, books, books ! 

I had found the secret of a garret-room 



234 • ^^^ E7iglish Novel 

Piled high with cases in my father's name 

. . . Where, creeping in and out 

Among the giant fossils of my past 

Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs 

Of a mastodon, I nibbled here or there 

At this or that box, pulling through the gap 

In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy. 

The first book first. And how I felt it beat 

Under my pillow in the morning's dark. 

An hour before the sun would let me read ! 

My books ! At last, because the time was ripe, 

I chanced upon the poets." 

And here, every reader of The Mill on the Floss will 
remember how, at a later period, Maggie chanced upon 
Thomas a Kempis at a tragic moment of her existence; 
and it is fine to see how in describing situations so alike, 
the purely elemental differences between the natures 
of Mrs. Browning and George Eliot project themselves 
upon each other. 

The scene in George Eliot concerning Maggie and 
Thomas a Kempis is too long to repeat here, but every- 
one will recall the sober, analytic, yet altogether vital 
and thrilHng picture of the trembling Maggie, as she 
absorbs wisdom from the sweet old mediaeval soul. But, 
on the other hand, Mrs. Browning sings it out, after 
this riotous melody: 

"As the earth 

Plunges in fury when the internal fires 

Have reached and pricked her heart. 

And throwing flat 
The marts and temples — the triumphal gates 
And towers of observation — clears herself 
To elemental freedom — thus, my soul. 
At poetry's divine first finger-touch, 
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised, 
Convicted of the great eternides 
Before two worlds. 



And the Principle of its Development. ,235 

But the sun was high - 

When first I felt my pulses set themselves 
For concord ; when the rhythmic turbulence 
Of blood and brain swept outward upon words, 
As wind upon the alders, blanching them 
By turning up their under-natures till 
They trembled in dilation. O delight 
And triumph of the poet who would say 
A man's mere 'yes,' a woman's common 'no,* 
A little human hope of that or this, 
And says the word so that it burns you through 
With special revelation, shakes the heart 
Of all the men and women in the world 
As if one came back from the dead and spoke, 
With eyes too happy, a familiar thing 
Become divine i' the utterance ! " 

I have taken special pleasure in the last sentence of 
this outburst, because it restates with a precise felicity at 
once poetic and scientific, but from a curiously different 
point of view, that peculiar function of George Eliot 
which I pointed out as appearing in the very first of her 
stories, namely, the function of elevating the plane of all 
commonplace life into the plane of the heroic by keep- 
ing every man well in mind of the awful ego within him 
which includes all the possibilities of heroic action. 
Now this is what George Eliot does, in putting before us 
these humble forms of Tom and Maggie, and the like : 
she says these common " yes " and "no" in terms of 
Tom and Maggie ; and yet says them so that this par- 
ticular Tom and Maggie burn you through with a special 
revelation — though one has known a hundred Maggies 
and Toms before. Thus we find the delight and triumph 
of the poetic and analytic novelist, George Eliot, pre- 
cisely parallel to this delight and triumph of the more 
exclusively poetic Mrs. Browning, who says a man's 
mere " yes," a woman's common " no," so that it shakes 



236 The English Novel 

the hearts of all the men and women in the world, etc. 
Aurora Leigh continues : 

" In those days, though, I never analysed, 

Not even myself, Analysis comes late. 

You catch a sight of nature, earliest ; 

In full front sun-face, and your eye-lids wink 

And drop before the wonder of 't ; you miss 

The form, through seeing the light. I lived those days. 

And wrote because I lived — unlicensed else ; 

My heart beat in my brain. Life's violent flood 

Abolished bounds — and, which my neighbor's field. 

Which mine, what mattered ? It is thus in youth ! 

We play at leap-frog over the god Time ; 

The love within us and the love without 

Are mixed, confounded; if we are loved or love 

We scarce distinguish 

In that first outrush of life's chariot wheels 
We know not if the forests move, or we." 

And now as showing the extreme range of George 
Eliot's genius, in regions where perhaps Mrs. Browning 
never penetrated, let me recall Sister Glegg and Sister 
Pullet, as types of women contrasting with Maggie and 
Aurora Leigh. You will remember how Mrs. Tulliver 
has bidden her three sisters, Mrs. Glegg, Mrs. Pullet, and 
Mrs. Deane, with their respective husbands, to a great 
and typical Dodson dinner, in order to eat and drink 
upon the momentous changes impending in Tom's 
educational existence : 

" The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. 
Glegg was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in 
Mrs. Tulliver's arm-chair, no impartial observer could have de- 
nied, for a woman of fifty, she had a very comely face and figure, 
though Tom and Maggie considered their aunt Glegg as the type 
of ugliness. It is true she despised the advantages of costume ; 
for though, as she often observed, no woman had better clothes, 
it was not her way to wear her new things out before her old ones. 



A;i.i th3 Principle of Its Development. 237 

Other women, if they hked, might have their best thread lace in 
every wash, but when Mrs. Glegg did it would be found that she 
had better lace laid by in the the right-hand drawer of her ward- 
robe, in the Spotted Chamber, than ever Mrs. Wool of St. Ogg's 
had bought in her life, although Mrs. Wool wore her lace before 
it was paid for. So of her curled fronts. Mrs. Glegg had doubt- 
less the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well 
as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness ; but to look out on 
the week-day world from under a crisp and glossy front would be 
to introduce a most dream-like and unpleasant confusion between 
the sacred and the secular. 

So, if Mrs. Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than 
usual, she had a design under it : she intended the most pointed 
* and cutting allusion to Mrs. Tulliver's bunches of blonde curls, 
separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each 
side of the parting. Mrs. Tulliver had shed tears several times 
at sister Glegg's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly 
curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them 
naturally administered support. Mrs. Glegg chose to wear her 
bonnet in the house to-day — untied and tilted slightly, of course 
— a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and hap- 
pened to be in a severe humor; she didn't know what draughts 
there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore 
a small sable tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was 
very far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long 
neck was protected by a chevaux-dc-frise of miscellaneous frilling. 
One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to 
know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Glegg's slate-colored silk 
gown must have been ; but, from certain constellations of small 
yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about it suggestive of a 
damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum 
of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear. 

" Mrs. Glegg held her large gold watch in her hand, with the 
many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs. 
Tulliver, who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that 
whatever it might be by other people's clocks and watches, it was 
gone half-past twelve by hers. 

'I don't know what ails sister Pullet,' she continued. 'It used 
to be the way in our family for one to be as early as another — I'm 
sure it was so in my poor father's time — and not for one sister to 
sit half an hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the 



238 The English Novel 

family are altered, it shan't be my fault ; I'll never be the one to 
come into a house when all the rest are going away. I wonder at 
sister Deane — she used to be more like me. But if you'll take my 
advice, Bessy, you'll put the dinner forward a bit, sooner than put 
it back, because folks are late as ought to ha' known better.' 

The sound of wheels while Mrs. Glegg was speaking was an in- 
terruption highly welcome to Mrs. TuUiver, who hastened out to re- 
ceive sister Pullet — it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was 
that of a four-wheel. 

Mrs. Glegg tossed her head and looked rather sour about the 
mouth at the thought of the " four-wheel." She had a strong 
opinion on that subject. 

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped 
before Mrs. Tulliver's door, and it was apparently requisite that 
she should shed a few more before getting out ; for, though her 
husband and Mrs. Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat still 
and shook her head sadly as she looked through her tears at the 
vague distance. 

'Why, whatever is the matter, sister ?' said Mrs. Tulliver. She 
was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the 
large toilet-glass in sister Pullet's best bedroom was possibly broken 
for the second time. 

There was no reply but a further shake of the head as Mrs. 
Pullet slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without cast- 
ing a glance at Mr. Pullet to see that he was guarding her hand- 
some silk dress from injury. Mr. Pullet was a small man with a 
high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking 
suit of black, and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied 
very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal 
ease. He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-looking 
wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant mantle, and large be- 
feathered and be-ribboned bonnet, as a small fishing-smack bears 
to a brig with all its sails spread. 

Mrs. Pullet brushed each door-post with great nicety about the 
latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridicu- 
lous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a 
half across the shoulders), and having done that, sent the muscles 
of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor 
where Mrs. Glegg was seated. 

' Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?' said Mrs. Glegg, 
rather sharply, as they shook hands. 



And the Principle of its Development. 239 

Mrs. Pullet sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind be- 
fore she answered. 

'She's gone,' unconsciously using an impressive figure of 
rhetoric. 

' It isn't the glass this time, then,' thought Mrs. Tulliver. 

'Died the day before yesterday,' continued Mrs. Pullet; 'an' 
her legs was as thick as my body,' she added with deep sadness, 
after a pause. ' They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the 
.vater — they say you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked.' 

' Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoiver she may 
be,' said Mrs. Glegg, with the promptitude and emphasis of a 
mind naturally clear and decided ; ' but I can't think who you're 
talking of, for my part.' 

' But / know," said Mrs. Pullet, sighing and shaking her head ; 
'and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. / know as 
it's old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twcntylands.' 

' Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance, as Pve 
ever heard of,' said Mrs. Glegg, who always cried just as much as 
was proper when anything happened to her own " kin," but not on 
other occasions. 

' She's so much acquaintance as I've seen her legs when they 
were like bladders . . . And an old lady as had doubled her money 
over and over again, and kept it all in her own management to the 
last, and had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow 
constant. There isn't many o\d. parish's like her, I doubt.' 

' And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a wagon,' 
observed Mr. Pullet. 

'Ah!" sighed Mrs. Pullet," 'she'd another complaint ever so 
many years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn't 
make out what it was. And she said to me, when I went to see 
her last Christmas, she said, ' Mrs. Pullet, if iver you have the 
dropsy, you'll think o' me.' ' She didsdiy so,' added Mrs. Pullet, 
beginning to cry bitterly again ; ' those were her very words. 
And she's to be buried o' Saturday, and Pullet's bid to the funeral.' 

' Sophy,' said Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her 
spirit of rational remonstrance, ' Sophy, I wonder at you, fretting 
and injuring your health about people as don't belong to 
you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, 
nor any o' the family, as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no 
more than this if we'd heard as our cousin Abbott had died sud- 
den without making his will.' 



240 The English Novel 

Mrs. Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather 
flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. 
It was not every body who could afford to cry so much about their 
neighbors who had left them nothing ; but Mrs. Pullett had mar- 
ried a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her 
crying and every thing else to the highest pitch of respectability. 

' Mrs. Sutton didn't die without making her will, though,' said 
Mr. Pullet, with a confused sense that he was saying something to 
sanction his wife's tears ; ' ours is a rich parish, but they say 
there's nobody else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs. 
Sutton. And she's left no leggicies, to speak on — left it all in lump 
to her husband's nevvy.' 

' There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then,' said Mrs. 
Glegg, ' if she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to. It's 
poor work when that's all you're got to pinch yourself for — not as 
I'm one o' those as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out 
at interest than other folks had reckoned. But it's a poor tale 
when it must go out o' your own family.' 

' I'm sure, sister,' said Mrs. Pullet, who had recovered 
sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, ' it's a nice 
sort o' man as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for he's troubled 
with the asthmy, and goes to bed every night at eight o'clock. He 
told me about it himself — as free as could be — one Sunday when 
he came to our church. He wears a hareskin on his chest, and 
has a trembling in his talk — quite a gentlemanly sort o' man. I told 
him there wasn't many months in the year as I wan't under the 
doctor's hands. And he said, ' Mrs. Pullet, I can feel for you.' 
That was what he said — the very words. ' Ah !' sighed Mrs. Pul- 
let, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who 
could enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white 
mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large 
bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteen pence. 
' Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see 
as the capbox was put out ? ' she added, turning to her husband. 

Mr. Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten 
it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the 
omission." 

Next day Mrs. TuUiver and the children visit Aunt 
Pullet : and we have some further afifecting details of that 
sensitive lady weeping at home instead of abroad. 




And the Principle of its Development. 241 

" Aunt Pullet, too, appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her 
sister was within hearing, said, ' Stop the children, for God's sake, 
Bessy ; don't let 'em come up the doorsteps ; Sally's bringing the 
old mat and the duster to rub their shoes.' 

Mrs. Pullet's front door mats were by no means intended to wipe 
shoes on : the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. 
Tom rebelled particularly against this shoe-wiping, which he al- 
ways considered in the light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it 
as the beginning of the disagreeable incident to a visit at aunt 
Pullet's where he had once been compelled to sit with towels wrapped 
around his boots — a fact which may serve to correct the too hasty 
conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must have been a great treat 
to a young gentleman fond of animals — fond, that is, of throwing 
stones at them. 

The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions ; 
it was the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very 
handsome carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so 
that the ascent of these glossy steps might have served, in 
barbarous times, as a trial by ordeal from which none but the most 
spotless virtue could have come off with unbroken hmbs. Sophy's 
weakness about these polished stairs was always a subject of bitter 
remonstrance on Mrs. Glegg's part; but Mrs. Tulliver ventured on 
no comment, only thinking to herself it was a mercy when she 
and the children were safe on the landing. 

' Mrs. Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,' said Mrs. 
Pullet, in a pathetic tone, as Mrs. Tulliver adjusted her cap. 

' Has she, sister ? ' said Mrs. Tulliver with an air of much inter- 
est. ' And how do you like it ?' 

' It's apt to make a mess with clothes, taking 'em out and put- 
ting 'em in again,' said Mrs. Pullet, drawing a bunch of keys from 
her pocket and looking at them earnestly, ' but it' ud be a pity for 
you to go away without seeing it. There's no knowing what may 
happen.' 

Mrs. Pullet shook her head slowly at this last serious considera- 
tion, which determined her to single out a particular key. 

' I'm afraid it'll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,' 
said Mrs. Tulliver, ' but I should like to see what sort of a crown 
she's made you.' 

Mrs. Pullet rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing 

a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed 
-^.x. would find the new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition 
1 1 



242 The English Novel 

could only have arisen from a too superficial acquaintance with 
the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs. Pullet 
was seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers 
of linen — it was a door key. 

' You must come with me into the best room,' said Mrs. Pullet. 

'May the children too, sister?' inquired Mrs. Tulliver, who 
saw that Maggie and Lucy were looking rather eager. 

' Well,' said aunt Pullet, reflectively, ' it'll perhaps be safer for 
'em to come — they'll be touching something if we leave 'em be- 
hind.' 

So they went in procession along the bright and slippery cor- 
ridor, dimly lighted by the semilunar top of the window which 
rose above the closed shutter : it was really quite solemn. Aunt 
Pullet paused and unlocked a door which opened on something 
still more solemn than the passage — a darkened room, in which 
the outer liglit, entering feebly, showed what looked like the 
corpses of furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not 
shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lucy laid hold of Maggie's 
frock, and Maggie's heai-t beat rapidly. 

Aunt Pullet half opened the shutter, and then unlocked the 
wardrobe with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in 
keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious 
scent of rose leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the pro- 
cess of taking out sheet after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant 
to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anti- 
climax to Maggie, who would have preferred something more pre- 
ternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to 
Mrs. Tulliver. She looked all round it in silence for some mo- 
ments, and then said emphatically, 'Well, sister, I'll never speak 
against the full crowns again ! ' 

It was a great concession, and Mrs. Pullet felt it ; she felt some- 
thing was due to it. 

'You'd like to see it on, sister?' she said, sadly. 'I'll open 
the shutter a bit farther.' 

' Well, if you don't mind taking off your cap, sister,' said Mrs. 
Tulliver. 

Mrs. Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp 
with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the 
mature and judicious women of those times, and, placing the 
bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper's lay-figure, 
that Mrs. Tulliver might miss no point of view. 



Ajid the Principle of its Development. 243 

' I've sometimes thought there's a loop too much o' ribbon on 
this left side, sister ; what do you think ? ' said Mrs. Pullet. 

Mrs. Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned 
her head on one side. ' Well, I think it's best as it is ; if you 
meddled with it, sister, you might repent.' 

'That's true,' said aunt Pullet, taking off the bonnet and look- 
ing at it contemplatively. 

'How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?' 
said Mrs. Tulliver, whose mind was actively engaged on the pos- 
sibility of getting a humble imitation of this chef-d-auvre made 
from a piece of silk she had at home. 

Mrs. Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then 
whispered, ' Pullet pays for it ; he said I was to have the best bon- 
net at Garum church, let the next best be whose it would.' 

She began slowly to adjust the trimmings in preparation for 
returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed 
to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head. 

'Ah ! ' she said at last, ' I may never wear it twice, sister : who 
knows ? ' 

' Don't talk o' that, sister,' answered Mrs. Tulliver. ' I hope 
you'll have your health this summer.' 

' Ah ! but there may come a death in the family, as there did 
soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, 
and we can't think o' wearing crape less than half a year for 
him.' 

'That would be unlucky,' said Mrs. Tulliver, entering thor- 
oughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. ' There's 
never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, 
especially wlien the crowns are so chancy — never two summers 
alike.' 

' Ah ! its the way i' this world,' said Mrs. Pullet, returning the 
bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a 
silence characterized by head-shaking until they had all issued 
from the solemn chamber and were in her own room again. 
Then, beginning to cry, she said : ' Sister, if you should never see 
that bonnet again till Fm dead and gone, you'll remember I 
showed it you this day.' 

I sincerely wish it were in my power to develop, along- 
side of the types of Maggie Tulliver and Aurora Leigh, 



244 ^'^^^ English Novel 

a number of other female figures which belong to the 
same period of life and literature. I please myself with 
calling these the Victorian women. They would include 
the name-giving queen, herself, the Eve in Mrs. Brown- 
ing's Drama of Exile, Princess Ida in Tennyson's Princess, 
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, (one of these figures, you 
observe, is just as real to us as the other; and I have 
lost all sense of difference between actual and literary 
existence), Mrs. Browning, Dinah Morris, Milly Barton, 
Janet Dempster, Florence Nightingale and Sister Dora, 
Romola, Dorothea Brooke, Myra, Charlotte Cushman, 
Mary Somerville and some others. If we are grateful 
to our sweet master Tennyson for his Dream of Fair 
Women, how grateful should we be to an age which has 
given us this realization of ideal women, of women who are 
so strong and so beautiful, that they have subtly brought 
about — that I can find no adjective so satisfactory for 
them as — "womanly" women. They have redeemed 
the whole time. When I hear certain mournful people 
crying out that this is a gross and material age, I reply 
that gross and material are words that have no meaning 
as of the epoch of the Victorian women. When the 
pessimists accuse the time of small aims and over-selfish- 
ness, I plead the Victorian women. When the pre- 
Raphaelites clamor that railroad and telegraph have 
fatally scarred the whole face of the picturesque and the 
ideal among us, I reply that on the other hand the Vic- 
torian women are more beautiful than any product of 
times that they call picturesque and ideal. 

And it is curiously fine that in some particulars the 
best expression of the corresponding attitude which man 
has assumed toward the Victorian women in the growth 
of the times has been poetically formulated by a woman. 
In Mrs. Browning's Drama of Exile, during those first 



And the Pri7iciple of its Development. 245 

insane moments when Eve is begging Adam to banish 
her for her transgression, or to do some act of retribu- 
tive justice upon her, Adam continually comforts her 
and finally speaks these words : 

.... I am deepest in the guilt, 
If last in the transgression. ... If God 
Who gave the right and joyance of the world 
Both unto thee and me — gave thee to me. 
The best gift last, the last sin was the worst. 
Which sinned against more complement of gifts 
And grace of giving. God ! I render back 
Strong benediction and perpetual praise 
From mortal feeble lips (as incense smoke 
Out of a little censer, may fill heaven), 
That Thou, in striking my benumbed hands 
And forcing them to drop all other boons 
Of beauty and dominion and delight, — 
Hast left this well-beloved Eve, this life 
Within life, this best gift, between tlieir palms. 
In gracious compensation. 

O my God ! 
I, standing here between the glory and dark, — 
The glory of thy wrath projected forth 
From Eden's wall, the dark of our distress 
Which settles a step off in that drear world, — 
Lift up to Thee the hands from whence hath fallen 
Only creation's sceptre, — thanking Thee 
That rather Thou hast cast me out with her 
Than left me lorn of her in Paradise, 
With angel looks and angel songs around 
To show the absence of her eyes and voice, 
And make society full desertness 
Without her use in comfort ! 

Because with her, I stand 
Upright, as far as can be in this fall, 
And look away from earth which doth convict, 
Into her face, and crown my discrowned brow 
Out of her love, and put the thought of her 



246 The English Novel 

Around me, for an Eden full of birds, 
And with my lips upon her lips, — thus, thus, — 
Do quicken and subhmate my mortal breath 
Which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides 
But overtops this grief!" 



A7id tJie Principle of its Development. 247 



XI. 



The fullness of George Eliot's mind at this time may 
be gathered from the rapidity with which one work fol- 
lowed another. A book from her pen had been appear- 
ing regularly each year. The Scenes from Clerical Life 
had appeared in book form in 1858, Adam Bede was 
printed in 1859, The Mill on the Floss came out in 
i860, and now, in i86r, followed Silas Marner, the 
Weaver of Ravcloe. It is with the greatest reluctance 
that I find myself obliged to pass this book without 
comment. In some particulars Silas Marner is the most 
remarkable novel in our language. On the one hand, 
when I read the immortal scene at the Rainbow Inn 
where the village functionaries, the butcher, the farrier, 
the parish clerk and so on are discussing ghosts, bullocks 
and other matters over their evening ale, my mind runs 
to Dogberry and Verges and the air feels as if Shak- 
speare were sitting somewhere not far off. On the other 
hand, the downright ghastliness of the young Squire's 
punishment for stealing the long-hoarded gold of Silas 
Marner the weaver, always carries nie straight to that 
pitiless Pardo7iers Tale of Chaucer in which gold is so 
cunningly identified with death. I am sure you will 
pardon me if I spend a single moment in recalling the 
plots of these two stories so far as concerns this point of 
contact. In Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale three riotous 
young men of Flanders are drinking one day at a tavern. 
In the midst of their merriment they hear the clink of a 
bell before a dead body which is borne past the door on 



24-8 The English Novel 

its way to burial. They learn that it is an old companion 
who is dead ; all three become suddenly inflamed with 
mortal anger against Death ; and they rush forth resolved 
to slay him wherever they may find him. Presently they 
meet an old man. " Why do you live so long ? " they 
mockingly inquire of him. " Because," says he, 

" Deth, alas, ne will not han my lif ; 
Thus walke I like a resteles caitif, 
And on the ground, which is my modres gate, 
I knocke with my staf erlich and late 
And say to hire ' Leve moder, let me in.' " 

" Where is this Death of whom you have spoken ? " 
furiously demand the three young men. The old man 
replied, " You will find him under an oak tree in yonder 
grove." The three rush forward ; and upon arriving at the 
oak find three bags full of gold coin. Overjoyed at their 
good fortune they are afraid to carry the treasure into 
town by day lest they be suspected of robbery. They 
therefore resolve to wait until night and in the meantime 
to make merry. For the latter purpose one of the three 
goes to town after food and drink. As soon as he is out 
of hearing, the two who remain under the tree resolve to 
murder their companion on his return so that they may 
be the richer by his portion of the treasure ; he, on the 
other hand, whilst buying his victual in town, shrewdly 
drops a great lump of poison into the bottle of drink he 
is to carry back so that his companions may perish and 
he take all. 

To make a long story short, the whole plot is carried 
out. As soon as he who was sent to town returns, his 
companions fall upon him and murder him ; they then 
proceed merrily to eat and drink what he has brought ; 
the poison does its work; presently all three lie dead 



And the Principle of its Development. 249 

under the oak tree by the side of the gold, and the old 
man's direction has come true, and they Jiave found 
death under that tree. In George Eliot's story the 
young English Squire also finds death in finding gold. 
You will all remember how Dunstan Cass in returning 
late at night from a fox-hunt on foot— for he had killed 
his horse in the chase — finds himself near the stone hut 
where Silas Marner the weaver has long plied his trade, 
and where he is known to have concealed a large sum in 
gold. The young man is extraordinarily pressed for 
money ; he resolves to take Marner's gold ; the night is 
dark and misty ; he makes his way through the mud and 
darkness to the cottage and finds the door open, Marner 
being, by the rarest of accidents, away from the hut. 
The young man quickly discovers the spot in the floor 
where the weaver kept his gold ; he seizes the two heavy 
leathern bags filled with guineas ; and the chapter ends. 
" So he stepped forward into the darkness." All this 
occurs in Chapter IV. The story then proceeds ; noth- 
ing more is heard of Dunstan Cass in the village for 
many years ; the noise of the robbery has long ago died 
away ; Silas Marner has one day found a golden head of 
hair lying on the very spot of his floor where he used to 
finger his own gold ; the little outcast who had fallen asleep 
with her head in this position, after having wandered 
into Marner's cottage, has been brought up by him to 
womanhood ; when one day, at a critical period in Silas 
Marner's existence, it happens that in draining some 
lower grounds the pit of an old stone quarry, which had 
for years stood filled with rain-water near his house, be- 
comes dry, and on the bottom is revealed a skeleton with 
a leathern bag of gold in each hand. The young man 
plunging out into the dark, laden with his treasure, had 

fallen in and lain for all these years to be afterwards 

II* 



250 The English Novel 

brought to light as another phase of the frequent iden- 
tity between death and gold. Here, too, one is obliged 
to remember those doubly dreadful words in hoinco and 
Juliet, where Romeo having with difficulty bought poison 
from the apothecary, cries : 

" There is thy gold ; worse poison to men's souls, 

Doing more murder in this loathsome world 

Than these poor compounds which thou mayst not sell. 

I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. 

Farewell ; buy food and get thyself in flesh." 

I must also instance one little passing picture in Silas 
Marncr which though extremely fanciful, is yet, a charm- 
ing type of some of the greatest and most characteristic 
work that George Eliot has done. Silas Marner had 
been a religious enthusiast of an obscure sect of a small 
manufacturing town of England ; suddenly a false ac- 
cusation of theft in which the circumstantial evidence 
was strong against him brings him into disgrace among 
his fellow-disciples. With his whole faith in God and 
man shattered he leaves his town, wanders over to the 
village of Raveloe, begins aimlessly to pursue his trade 
of weaving, presently is paid for some work in gold ; in 
handling the coin he is smit with the fascination of its 
yellow radiance, and presently we find him pouring out 
all the prodigious intensity of his nature, which had 
previously found a fitter field in religion, in the miser's 
passion. Working day and night while yet a young man 
he fills his two leathern bags with gold; and George 
Eliot gives us some vivid pictures of how, when his day's 
work would be done, he would brighten up the fire in 
his stone hut which stood at the edge of the village, 
eagerly lift up the particular brick of the stone floor 
under which he kept his treasure concealed, pour out the 



And the Principle of its Development. 251 

bright yellow heaps of coin and run his long white 
fingers through them with ail the miser's ecstasy. But 
after he is robbed the utter blank in his soul — and one 
can imasfine such a blank in such a soul, for he was es- 
sentially religious — becomes strangely filled. One day a 
poor woman leading her little golden-haired child is 
making her way along the road past Marner's cottage; 
she is the wife, by private marriage, of the Squire's eldest 
son, and after having been cruelly treated by him for 
years has now desperately resolved to appear with her 
child at a great merry-making which goes on at the 
Squire's to-day, there to expose all and demand justice. 
It so happens however that in her troubles she has be- 
come an opium-taker; just as she is passing Marner's 
cottage the effect of an unusually large dose becomes 
overpowering ; she lies down and falls off into a stupor 
which this time ends in death. Meantime the little 
golden-haired girl innocently totters into the opf^n door 
of Marner's cottage during his absence ; presently lies 
down, places her head with all its golden wealth upon the 
very brick which Marner used to lift up in order to bring 
his gold to light, and so falls asleep, while a ray of sun- 
light strikes through the window and illuminates the 
little one's head. Marner now returns; he is dazed at be- 
holding what seems almost to be another pile of gold at 
the familiar spot on the floor. He takes this new treas- 
ure into his hungry heart and brings up the little girl 
who becomes a beautiful woman and faithful daughter to 
him. His whole character now changes and the hardness 
of his previous brutal misanthropy softens into some- 
thing at least approaching humanity. Now, it is fairly 
characteristic of George Eliot that she constantly places 
before us lives which change in a manner of which this 
is typical : that is to say, she is constantly showing us 



252 The Ejiglish Novel 

intense and hungry spirits first wasting their intensity 
and hunger upon that which is unworthy, often from 
pure ignorance of anything worthier, then finding where 
love is worthy, and thereafter loving larger loves, and 
living larger lives. 

Is not this substantially the experience of Janet 
Dempster, of Adam Bede, replacing the love of Hetty 
with that of Dinah Morris ; of Romola, of Dorothea, of 
Gwendolen Harleth ? 

This last name brings us directly to the work which 
we were specially to study to-day. George Eliot's novels 
have all striking relationships among themselves which 
cause them to fall into various groups according to 
various points of view. There is one point however from 
which her entire work divides itself into two groups, of 
which one includes the whole body of her writings up to 
1 876 : the other group consists solely of Daniel Deronda. 
This classification is based on the fact that all the works 
in the first group concern the life of a time which is past. 
It is only in Daniel Deronda, after she has been writing 
for more than twenty years, that George Eliot first 
ventures to deal with English society of the present day. 
To this important claim upon our interest may be ad- 
ded a further circumstance which will in the sequel de- 
velop into great significance. Daniel Deronda has had 
the singular fate of being completely misunderstood to 
such a degree that the greatest admirers of George Eliot 
have even ventured to call it a failure, while the Philis- 
tines have rioted in abusing Gwendolen Harleth as a 
weak and rather disagreeable personage, Mirah and 
Daniel as unmitigated prigs, and the plot as an absurd at- 
tempt to awaken interest in what is called the religious 
patriotism of the Jews. This comparative failure of Daniel 
Deronda to please current criticism and even the ardent 



And the Principle of its Development. 253 

admirers of George Eliot, so clearly opens up what is to 
my view a singular and lamentable weakness in certain vital 
portions of the structure of our society that I have thought 
I could not render better service than by conducting our 
analysis of Daniel Dcronda so as to make it embrace 
some of the most common of the objections urged 
against that work. Let us recall in largest possible out- 
line the movement of Daniel Dcronda. This can be done 
in a surprisingly brief statement. The book really con- 
cerns two people — one is Gwendolen Harleth, a beautiful 
English girl, brought up with all those delicate tastes 
and accomplishments which we understand when we 
think of the highest English refinement, wayward — 
mainly because she has seen as yet no way that seemed 
better to follow than her own — and ambitious, but evi- 
dently with that sacred discontent which desires the best 
and which will only be small when its horizon contains 
but small objects. The other main personage is Daniel 
Deronda, who has been brought up as an Englishman of 
rank, has a striking face and person, a natural love for all 
that is beautiful and noble, a good sense that enables him 
to see through the banalities of English political life and 
to shrink from involving his own existence in such lit- 
tleness, and who, after some preliminary account of his 
youth in the earlier chapters, is placed before us early 
in the first book as a young man of twenty who is ser- 
iously asking himself whether life is worth living. 

It so happens however that presently Gwendolen Har- 
leth is found asking herself the same question. Tempted 
by a sudden reverse of fortune, by the chance to take 
care of her mother, and one must add by her own desire 
— guilty enough in such a connection — for plenty of 
horses to ride, and for all the other luxurious accompani- 
ments which form so integral a portion of modern En- 



254 ^^^'^ English Novel 

glish life ; driven, too, by what one must not hesitate to 
call the cowardliest shrinking from the name and posi- 
tion of a governess ; conciliated by a certain infinite ap- 
pearance of lordliness which in Grandcourt is mainly 
nothing more than a blase brutality which has exhausted 
desire, Gwendolen accepts the hand of Grandcourt, 
quickly discovers him to be an unspeakable brute, suf- 
fers a thousand deaths from remorse and is soon found — 
as is just said — wringing her hands and asking if life is 
worth living. 

Now the sole purpose and outcome of the book lie in 
its answers to the questions of these two young people. 
It does answer them, and answers them satisfactorily. 
On the one hand, Gwendolen Harleth, in the course of 
her married life, is several times thrown with Daniel 
Deronda ; his loftiness, his straightforwardness, his fervor, 
his frankness, his general passion for whatsoever things 
are large and fine, — in a word, his goodness — form a 
complete revelation to her. She suddenly discovers that 
life is not only worth living, but that the possibility of 
making one's life a good life invests it with a romantic in- 
terest whose depth is infinitely beyond that of all the 
society-pleasures which had hitherto formed her horizon. 
On the other hand, Daniel Deronda discovers that he is 
a Jew by birth, and fired by the visions of a fei"vent 
Hebrew friend, he resolves to devote his life and the 
wealth that has fallen to him from various sources to the 
cause of reestablishing his people in their former Eastern 
home. Thus also for him, instead of presenting the 
dreary doubt whether it is worth living, life opens up a 
boundless and fascinating field for energies of the loftiest 
kind. 

Place then, clearly before your minds these two dis- 
tinct strands of story. One of these might be called The 



And the Principle of its Development. 255 

Repentance of Gzvendolen Harleth, and this occupies 
much the larger portion of the work. The other might 
be called The Mission of Daniel Deronda. These two 
strands are, as we have just seen, united into one artistic 
thread by the organic purpose of the book which is to 
furnish a fair and satisfactory answer to the common 
question over which these two young protagonists strug- 
gle : " Is life worth living ?" 

Now the painting of this repentance of Gwendolen 
Harleth, the development ^of this beautiful young aristo- 
crat Daniel Deronda into a great and strong man conse- 
crated to a holy purpose : all this is done with such skill- 
ful reproduction of contemporary English life, with such 
a wealth of flesh-and-blood character, with an art alto- 
gether so subtile, so analytic, yet so warm and so loving 
withal, that if I were asked for the most significant, the 
most tender, the most pious and altogether the most up- 
lifting of modern books, it seems to me I should specify 
Daniel Deronda. 

It was remarked two lectures ago that Shakspeare had 
never drawn a repentance ; and if we consider for a sin- 
gle moment what is required in order to paint such a 
long and intricate struggle as that through which our 
poor, beautiful Gwendolen passed, we are helped towards 
a clear view of some reasons at least why this is so. For 
upon examining the instances of repentance alleged by 
those who disagree with me on this point — as mentioned 
in my last lecture — I find that the real difference of opin- 
ion between us is, not as to whether Shakspeare ever 
drew a repentance, but as to what is a repentance. There 
certainly are in Shakspeare pictures of regret for inju- 
ries done to loved ones under mistake or under passion, 
and sometimes this regret is long-drawn. But surely 
such reversal of feeling is only that which would be felt 



256 The English Novel 

by any man of ordinarily manful make upon discovering 
that he had greatly wronged anyone, particularly a loved 
one. It is to this complexion that all the alleged in- 
stances of repentances in Shakspeare come at last. No- 
where do we find any special portrayal of a character en- 
gaged to its utmost depths in that complete subversion 
of the old by the new, — that total substitution of some 
higher motive for the whole existing body of emotions 
and desires, — that emergence out of the twilight world 
of selfishness into the large and sunlit plains of a love 
which does not turn upon self, 

"Which bends not with the remover to remove" 
Nor " alters when it alteration finds." 

For example, Leontes, in Winter s Tale, who is cited 
as a chief instance of Shakspeare's repentances, quite 
clearly shows by word and act that his regret is mainly 
a sense of personal loss, not a change of character. He 
is sorrowful not so much because he has sinned as be- 
cause he has hurt himself In Act V. just before the 
catastrophe which restores him his wife and daughter, we 
find him exclaiming : 

" Good Pauline 
O that ever I 
Had squared me to thy counsel ! Then even now 
I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes 
Have taken treasure from her lips — &c, '' 

And again in the same scene, where Florizel and 
Perdita have been brought before him, he cries : 

" What might I have been, 
Might I a son and daughter now have looked on 
Such goodly things as you ! " 



And the Principle of its Development. 257 

In these it is clear that Leontes is speaking from per- 
sonal regret ; there is no thought here of that total ex- 
pansion of an ego into a burning love of all other egos, 
implied in the term repentance, as I have used it. Simi- 
larly, King Lear, who has also been cited as an example 
of Shakspeare's repentances is simply an example of regret 
for the foulest of wrongs done in a moment of silly pas- 
sion. After the poor old man, upon regaining his con- 
sciousness under Cordelia's tender ministrations, is cap- 
tured together with Cordelia, in Scene III of Act V, Cor- 
delia says, as if to comfort him : 

" We are not the first 
Who with best meaning have incurred the worst. 
For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down. 

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters ?" 
Lear. — No, no, no, no ! Come let's away to prison ; 
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage ; 
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down 
And ask of thee forgiveness." 

Here, clearly enough, is regret for his injury to Cor- 
delia, but quite as clearly, no general state of repentance ; 
and in the very few other words uttered by the old king 
before the play ends surely nothing indicating such a 
state appears. Of all the instances suggested only one 
involves anything like the process of character-change 
which I have called a repentance, such as Gwendolen 
Harleth's for example ; but this one, unfortunately, is 
not drawn by Shakspeare : it is only mentioned as hav- 
ing occurred. This is the repentance of Duke Freder- 
ick in As you Like it. Just at the end of that play, when 
Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver, and Celia and all the rest 
have unraveled all their complications, and when every- 
thing that can be called plot in the play is finished, the 



258 The English Novel 

son of old Sir Rowland appears before the company in 
the wood and calls out : 



" Let me have audience for a word or two, 

Duke Frederick hearing how that every day 
Men of great worth resorted to this forest 
Addressed a mighty power 

purposely to take 
His brother here and put him to the sword. 
And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,- 
Where meetin;^ with an old religious man, 
After some questions with him was converted 
Both from his enterprise and from the world ; 
His crown bequeathing to his banished brother, 
And all their lands restored to them again 
That were with him exiled." 



Here we have indeed a true repentance, but this is all 
we have of it ; the passage I have read contains the 
whole picture. 

If we now go on and ask ourselves why these fasci- 
nating phenomena of repentance, which George Eliot has 
treated with such success, never engaged Shakspeare's 
energy, we come at the very first step upon a limitation 
of the drama as opposed to the novel which, in the 
strongest way, confirms the view I was at such pains to 
set forth in my earlier lectures of that necessity for a 
freer form than the dramatic, which arises from the more 
complete relations between modern personalities and 
which has really developed the novel out of the drama. 

How, for instance, could Shakspeare paint the yeas 
and nays, the twists, the turns, the intricacies of Gwen- 
dolen Harleth's thought during the long weeks while 
she was debating whether she should accept Grandcourt? 
The whole action of this drama, you observe, is confined 



And the Principle of its Development. 259 

within the small round head of the girl herself. How 
could such action be brought before the audience of a 
play? The only hope would be in a prolonged soliloquy, 
for these are thoughts which no young woman would 
naturally communicate to any one ; but what audience 
could stand so prolonged a soliloquy, even if any 
character could be found in whom it would be natural ? 
And sometimes, too, the situation is so subtly complex 
that Gwendolen is soliloquizing in such a manner that 
we, the audience, hear her while Grandcourt, who is 
standing by, does not, 

" I used to think archery was a great bore," Grandcourt began. 
He spoke with a fine accent, but with a certain broken drawl, as 
of a distinguished personage with a distinguished cold in his chest. 

"Are you converted to-day ?" said Gwendolen. 

(Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes 
of opinion about herself that might be entertained by Grandcourt.) 

"Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one 
generally sees people missing and simpering." 

"And do you care about the turf? or is that among the things 
you have left off ? " 

(Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extremely 
calm cold manners might be less disagreeable as a husband than 
other men, and not likely to interfere with his wife's preferen- 
ces.) 

" You would perhaps like tiger-hunting or pig-sticking. I saw 
some of that for a season or two in the East. Everything here is 
poor stuff after that." 

" You are fond of danger then ? '' 

(Pause, during which Gwendolen speculated on the probability 
that the men of coldest manners were the most adventurous, and 
felt the strength of her own insight, supposing the question had to 
be decided.) 

"One must have something or other. But one gets used to it." 

"I begin to think I am very fortunate, because everything is 
new to me ; it is only that I can't get enough of it. I am not used 
to anything except being dull, which I should like to leave off as 
you have left off shooting." 



26o The English Novel 

(Pause, during which it occurred to Gwendolen that a man of 
cold and distinguished manners might possibly be a dull com- 
panion ; but on the whole, the thought that most persons were 
dull, and that she had not observed husbands to be companions.) 

" Why are you dull ? '' 

" This is a dreadful neighborhood, there is nothing to be done in 
it. That is why I practised my archery." 

(Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an 
unmarried woman who could not go about and had no com- 
mand of anything, must necessarily be dull through all the degrees 
of comparison as time went on.) 

" You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will carry 
the first prize.'' 

" I don't know that. I have great rivals. Did you not observe 
how well Miss Arrowpoint shot ?'' 

(Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been 
known to choose some one else than the woman they most ad- 
mired, and recalled several experiences of that kind in novels.) 

At this point we come upon an element of difference 
between the novel and the drama which has not hitherto 
been fairly appreciated, so far as I know. Consider for 
a moment the wholly supernatural power which is neces- 
sarily involved in the project of thus showing the most 
secret workings of the mind and heart of this young 
girl Gwendolen Harleth ! In real life what power less 
than God's can make me see the deepest thought and 
feeling of a fellow-creature ? But since the novel is al- 
ways a transcript of real, or at any rate of possible, life, 
you observe that wherever these workings of heart and 
brain are thus laid bare, the tacit supposition is, in plain 
terms, that God is the writer, or that the writer is a god. 
In the drama no supposition is necessary because here 
we become acquainted with only such matters as are 
shown us in the ordinary way, by scenery or by the 
speech or gesture of the actor. This consideration seems 
to me to lift the novel to the very highest and holiest 



And the Principle of its Development. 261 

plane of creative effort ; he who takes up the pen of the 
novelist assumes, as to that novel, to take up along with it 
the omniscience of God. He proposes, in effect, to bring 
about the revelations of Judgment Day long before the 
trumpet has sounded. George Eliot shows us the play 
of Gwendolen Harleth's soul with the same uncom- 
promising fulness with which the most literal believer 
expects to give account of the deeds done in the body at 
the last day. 

In contemplating this vast ascent from the attitude of 
the dramatist to that of the novelist — the dramatist is a 
man ; the novelist — as to that novel, is a god — we are 
contemplating simply another phase of the growth of 
man from Shakspeare to George Eliot. 

And we reach still another view of that growth when 
we reflect that even if Shakspeare could have overcome 
the merely mechanical difficulty of presenting a repent- 
ance without overmuch soliloquy, he would probably 
have found but poorly-paying houses at the Globe 
Theatre to witness any drama so purely spiritual as that 
which George Eliot has shown us going on upon the 
little ill-lighted stage of a young girl's consciousness. 
Just as we found that the prodigious advance in the near- 
ness of man to his fellow from the time of y^schylus to 
that of George Eliot was implied in the fact that the lat- 
ter could gather an interested audience about a couple of 
commonplace children (as in TJie Mill on the Floss), 
whilst the former required the larger stimulus of Titanic 
quarrel and angry Jove; so here we have reached an evi- 
dence of still more subtle advance as between the times 
of Shakspeare and of George Eliot when we find the 
latter gathering a great audience about this little inward, 
actionless, complex drama of Gwendolen Harleth, while 
we reflect that Shakspeare must have his stimulant pas- 



262 The English Novel 

sion, his crime, his patriotism, and the like, as the only 
attracting motives. In truth I find what seems to be a 
cunning indication that George Eliot herself did not feel 
quite sure of her audience for this same little play. At 
the end of Chapter XL, she breaks off from a description 
of one of Gwendolen's capricious turns, and as if in apolo- 
getic defense says : 



" Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human 
history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small infer- 
ences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant ? — in 
a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigor making armies of 
themselves and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely ; 
... a time when the soul of man was waking to pulses which had 
for centuries been beating in him unheard. . . . What, in the midst 
of that mighty drama, are girls and their blind visions ? They are 
the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring or fight- 
ing. In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages 
the treasure of human affections.'' 



Thus it appears that for Shakspeare to draw such 
repentances as Gwendolen Harleth's was not only diffi- 
cult from the playwright's point of view, but premature 
from the point of view of the world's growth. In truth, 
I suspect, if we had time to pursue this matter, that we 
should find it leading us into some very instructive 
views of certain rugged breaking-off places in Shaks- 
peare. I suppose we must consider the limitations of his 
time; though it is just possible there may be limitations 
of his genius, also. We should presently find ourselves 
asking further how it is that Shakspeare not only never 
drew a great reformation, but never painted a great 
reformer? It seems a natural question: How is it, that 
it is Milton, and not Shakspeare, who has treated the 
subject of Paradise Lost and Regained ; how is it, that 



And the Principle of its Development. 263 

the first-class subject was left for the second-class genius ? 
We all know how Milton has failed in what he intended 
with his poem, and how astonished he would be at find- 
ing that the only one of his characters which has taken 
any real hold upon the world is his Satan. It seems 
irresistible to ask ourselves why might not our most 
eloquent tongue have treated our most lofty theme ? 
Or, if we should find special reasons in the temper of his 
time why Shakspeare could not or should not have 
treated this theme, we may still ask, why did he never 
paint for us one of those men who seem too large to be 
bounded in their affections merely by limits of country, 
but who loved and worked for the whole world, Buddha, 
Zoroaster, Mahomet, Socrates, Luther ; nay, why may 
not the master, have given us a master's picture of Chris- 
topher Columbus, or even of John Vanini, the scientific 
martyr ; even of the fantastic Giordano Bruno, who 
against all warnings boldly wandered from town to town 
defending his doctrines until he was burned, in 1600? 
And if any of the academicians now in my audience 
should incline to pursue this strange psychologic literary 
problem, I make no doubt that useful light would be 
cast upon the search if you should consider along with 
these questions the further inquiries why Shakspeare never 
mentions either of the two topics which must have been 
foremost in the talk of his time : namely, America and 
tobacco. Among all the allusions to contemporary 
matter in his plays the nearest he ever comes to America 
is the single instance in The Tempest, where Ariel is 
mentioned as " fetching dew from the still-vexed Ber- 
moothcs " (Bermudas). As for tobacco ; although pretty 
much all London must have been smoking vigorously 
about the time Shakspeare was writing Much Ado About 
Nothing and The Merry Wives of Windsor ; although 



264 ' The English Novel 

certainly to a countryman not a great while out of the 
woods of Warwickshire it must have been the oddest of 
sights to see people sucking at hollow tubes and puffing 
smoke from their mouths and nostrils; although, too, 
the comedies of his contemporaries are often cloudy with 
tobacco smoke : nevertheless there is not, so far as my 
recollection goes, the faintest allusion to the drinking of 
tobacco (as it was then called), in the whole body of his 
writings. Now all these omissions are significant because 
conspicuous; always, in studying genius, we learn as 
much from what it has not done, as from what it has 
done ; and if research should succeed in arranging these 
neglects from any common point of view, it is possible 
that something new might still be said about Shakspeare. 

But, to return to Daniel Deronda. A day or two after 
George Eliot's death the Saturday Review contained an 
elaborate editorial summary of her work. For some 
special ends, permit me to read so much of it as relates 
to the book now under consideration. " Daniel Dero7ida 
is devoted to the whimsical object of glorifying real or 
imaginary Jewish aspirations. It cannot be doubted that 
so fantastic a form of enthusiasm was suggested by some 
personal predilection or association. A devotion to the 
Jewish cause unaccompanied by any kind of interest in 
the Jewish religion is not likely to command general 
sympath-y ; but even if the purpose of the story had been 
as useful as it is chimerical and absurd, the inherent fault 
of didactic fiction would scarcely have been diminished. 
It is significant that when George Eliot deliber- 
ately preferred the function of teaching to her proper 
office of amusing she sacrificed her power of instruction 
as well as her creative faculty." 

Of course, in general, no man in his senses thinks of 
taking in serious earnest every proposition in the Satur- 



Ajtd ike Priiiciple of its Development. 265 

day Reviczv. It is an odd character which long ago 
assumed the role of teasing English society by gravely 
•advancing any monstrous assertions at random and 
laughing in its sleeve at the elaborate replies with which 
these assertions would be honored by weak and unsus- 
pecting people. But its position upon this particular 
point of Daniel Dcronda happens to be supported by 
similar views among her professed admirers. 

Even The Spectator in its obituary notice completely 
mistakes the main purpose of Daniel Deronda ; in de- 
claring that " she takes religious patriotism for the sub- 
ject," though as I have just indicated, surely the final 
aim of the book is to furnish to two young modern peo- 
ple a motive sufficient to make life not only worth living 
but fascinating ; and of the two distinct plots in the book 
one — and the one to which most attention is paid — 
hinges upon Gwendolen Harleth's repentance, while it is 
only the other and slighter which is concerned with what 
these papers call religious patriotism, and here the phrase 
" religious patriotism " if we examine it is not only 
meaningless — what is religious patriotism ? — but has the 
effect of dwarfing the two grand motives which are 
given to Daniel Deronda ; namely religion and patriotism. 

Upon bringing together, however, all the objections 
which have been urged against Daniel Deronda, I think 
they may be classified and discussed under two main 
heads. First it is urged that Daniel Deronda and Mirah 
— and even Gwendolen Harleth, after her change of 
spirit — are all prigs ; secondly, it is urged that the moral 
purpose of the book has overweighted the art of it, that 
what should have been pure nature and beauty have been 
obscured by didacticism, thus raising the whole question 
of Art for Art's sake which has so mournfully divided 
the modern artistic world. This last objection, opening, 
12 



2 66 The English Novel 



i>' 



as it does, the whole question of how far fervent moral 
purpose injures the work of the true artist, is a matter of 
such living importance in the present state of our art, — 
particularly of our literary art ; it so completely sums 
up all these contributory items of thought which have 
been gradually emerging in these lectures regarding the 
growth of human personality together with the correla- 
tive development of the novel : and the discussions con- 
cerning it are conducted upon such small planes and 
from such low and confusing points of view that I will ask 
to devote my next lecture to a faithful endeavor to get all 
the light possible upon the vexed matter of Art for Art's 
sake, and to showing how triumphantly George Eliot's 
Daniel Dcroiida seems to settle that entire debate with 
the most practical of answers. 

Meantime in discussing the other class of objections 
which we managed to generalize, to wit that the three 
main characters in Daniel Deronda are prigs, a serious 
difficulty lies in the impossibility of learning from these 
objectors exactly what is a prig. And I confess I should 
be warned off from any attempt at discussion by this 
initial difficulty if I did not find great light thrown on 
the subject by discovering that the two objections of 
prig-ism and that of didacticism already formulated are 
really founded upon the same cunning weakness in our 
current culture. The truth is George Eliot's book Dan- 
iel Deronda, is so sharp a sermon that it has made the 
whole English contemporary society uncomfortable. It 
is curious and instructive to see how unable all the ob- 
jectors have been to put their fingers upon the exact 
source of this discomfort; so that in their bewilderment 
one lays it to prig-ism, another to didacticism, and so on. 
That a state of society should exist in which such a piece 
of corruption as Grandcourt should be not only the 



And the Principle of its Development. 267 

leader but the crazing fascination and ideal of the most 
delicate and fastidious young women in that society ; 
that a state of society should exist in which those pure 
young girls whom George Eliot describes as " the deli- 
cate vessels in which man's affections are hoarded through 
the ages," should be found manoeuvring for this Grand- 
court infamy, plotting to be Grandcourt's wife instead of 
flying from him in horror; that a state of society should 
exist in which such a thing was possible as a marriage 
between a Gwendolen Harleth and a Grandcourt ; this 
was enough to irritate even the thickest skinned Philis- 
tine, and this George Eliot's book showed with a terrible 
conclusiveness. Yet the showing was made so daintily 
and with so light a hand that, as I have said, current 
society did not know, and has not yet recognized 
where or how the wound was. We have all read of 
the miraculous sword in the German fable whose blade 
was so keen that when, upon a certain occasion, its 
owner smote a warrior with it from crown to saddle, 
the warrior nevertheless rode home and was scarcely 
aware he had been wounded until, upon his wife opening 
the door, he attempted to embrace her and fell into two 
pieces. Now, as I said, just as Daniel Dcronda made 
people feel uncomfortable by even vaguely revealing a 
sharp truth — so, a prig, so far as I can make out, is a 
person whose goodness is so genuine, essential and ever- 
present that all ungenuine people have a certain sense of 
discomfort when brought in contact with it. If the prig- 
hater be questioned he will not deny the real goodness of 
the Daniel Dcronda people; he dare not — no one in this 
age dare — to wish explicitly that Mirah and Daniel 
Deronda might be less good ; but as nearly as anything 
definite can be obtained what he desires is that the prig 
should be good in some oily and lubricative way so as 



268 The English Novel 

not to jar the nerves of those who are less good. Con- 
form, conform ! seems to be the essential cry of the prig- 
haters ; if you go to an evening party you wear your 
dress coat and look like every other man ; but if your 
goodness amounts to a hump, a deformity, we do not 
ask you to cut it off, but at least pad it ; if every one 
grows as big as you we shall have to enlarge all our draw- 
ing-rooms and society will be disorganized. In short, 
the cry against the prig turns out to be nothing more 
than the old claim for conformity and the conventional. 
For one, I never hear these admonitions to conformity 
without recalling a comical passage of Tom Hood's in 
which the fellows of a Zoological society propose to 
remedy the natural defects of animal morphology, such 
as the humps of dromedaries and the overgrowth of hair 
upon lions so as to bring all the grotesqueness of the 
animal creation into more conformity with conventional 
ideas of proportion. The passage occurs in a pretended 
report from the keeper of the animals to the President of 
the society. After describing the condition of the various 
beasts the keeper proceeds : 

Honnerd Sur, — Their is an aggitating skeem of witch I humbly 
approve very hiley. The plan is owen to sum of the Femail Fel' 
lers, — . . . For instances the Bufifloo and Fallo dears and cetra to 
have their horns Gilded and Sheaps is to hav Pink ribbings round 
there nex. The Ostreaches is to have their plums stuck in their 
heds, and the Pecox tales will be always spred out on fraime wurks 
like the hispaliers. All the Bares is to be tort to Dance to Wippert's 
Quadrils and the Lions manes is to be subjective to pappers and the 
curling tongues. The gould and silver Fesants is to be Polisht 
every day with Plait Powder and the Cammils and Drumdearis and 
other defourmed anymills is to be paddid to hide their Crukidnes. 
Mr. Howard is to file down the tusks of the wild Bores, and the 
Spoons of the Spoonbills is to maid as like the King's Patten as 
possible. The elifunt will be himbelisht with a Sugger candid Castle 



Ajid the Principle of its Development. 269 

maid by Gunter and the Flaminggoes will be touched up with 
Frentch ruge The Sloath is proposed to have an illcgant Stait 
Bed — and the Bever is to ware one of Perren's Hte Warter Proof 
Hats — and the Balld Vulters baldness will be hided by a small 
Whig from Trewfits. The Grains will be put into trousirs and the 
Hippotamus tite laced for a waste. Experience will dictait menny 
more imbellishing modes, with witch I conclud that I am 
Your Honners, 

Very obleeged and humbel former servant, 

Stephen Humphreys. 

Such is the ideal to which the prig is asked to con- 
form, but after the first six lectures of this course we are 
specially in position to see in all this cry nothing but the 
old clamor against personality. Upon us who have 
traced the growth of personality from ^schylus to 
George Eliot and who have found that growth to be the 
one direction for the advance of our species this cry comes 
with little impressiveness. 



270 The English Novel 



XII. 



In the last lecture we obtained a view of George Eliot's 
Daniel Deronda as containing two distinct stories, one of 
which might have been called The Repentance of Given- 
dolen Harlctli, and the other, The Mission of Daniel 
Deronda ; and we generalized the principal objections 
against the work into two : namely, that the main charac- 
ters were prigs, and that the artistic value of the book 
was spoiled by its moral purpose. In discussing the first 
of these objections we found that probably both of them 
might be referred to a common origin ; for examination 
of precisely what is meant by a prig revealed that he is a 
person whose goodness is so downright, so unconforming 
and so reduced that it makes the mass of us uncomfor- 
table. Now there can be no question that so far as the 
charge of being overloaded with moral purposes is 
brought against Daniel Deronda^ as distinguished from 
George Eliot's other works, it is so palpably contrary to 
all facts in the case that we may clearly refer it to some 
fact outside the case : and I readily find this outside fact 
in that peculiar home-thrust of the moral of Daniel 
Deronda which has rendered it more tangible than that 
of any preceding work which concerned time past. You 
will remember we found that it was only in Daniel 
Deronda, written in 1876, after thirty years of study and 
of production, that George Eliot allowed herself to treat 
current English society; you will remember too, how we 
found that this first treatment revealed among other things 
a picture of an unspeakable brute, Grandcourt, throned like 
an Indian lama above the multitude, and receiving with 



And the Principle of its Development. 2 7 1 

a blas6 stare, the special adoration of the most refined 
young EngHsh girls; a picture which made the worship 
of the golden calf or the savage dance around a merely 
impotent wooden idol, fade into tame blasphemy. No 
man could deny the truth of the picture; the galled jade 
was obliged to wince ; this time it was my withers that 
were wrung. Thus the moral purpose oi Daniel Dcronda 
wJiich is certainly beyond all comparison less obtrusive 
than that of any other book written by George Eliot, 
grew by its very nearness, out of all perspective. 
Though a mere gnat, it sat on the very eyelash of society 
and seemed a monster. 

In speaking of George Eliot's earlier stories I was at 
pains to show how explicitly she avowed their moral 
purpose ; in Amos Barton, in Jancfs Repentance, m. 
Adam Bede, everywhere there is the fullest avowal of 
didacticism ; on almost every other page one meets those 
direct appeals from the author in her own person to the 
reader, in which George Eliot indulged more freely than 
any novelist I know, enforcing this or that moral view in 
plain terms of preaching. But it curiously happens that 
even these moral ' asides ' are conspicuously absent in 
Daniel Dcronda: the most cursory comparison of it in 
this particular with Adam Bede, for example, reveals an 
enormous disproportion in favor of Deronda as to the 
weight of this criticism. Yet people who had enthusi- 
astically accepted and extolled Adam Bede, with all its 
explicitly moralizing passages and its professedly preach- 
ing characters, suddenly found that Daniel Deronda 
was intolerably priggish and didactic. But resting then 
on the facts in the case — easily possible by comparing 
Daniel Deronda with any previous work — as to show how 
this censure of didacticism loses all momentum as against 
this particular book ; let us advance to the more interes- 



272 The English Novel 

ting, because more general, fact that many people — some 
in great sincerity — have preferred this censure against all 
of George Eliot's work and against all didactic novels in 
general. The objection involved many shades of opin- 
ion, and is urged with the most diverse motives and 
manner. At one extreme we have the Saturday Review 
growling that the office of the novelist is to amuse, 
never to instruct, that George Eliot, in seeking the latter 
has even forfeited the former, and that Daniel Dcronda 
neither amuses nor instructs ; whereupon George Eliot is 
derisively bid, in substance, to put on the cap and bells 
again, and leave teaching to her betters ; with a voice, by 
the way, wondrously like that with which the Edinburgh 
Review some years ago cried out to our adorable John 
Keats, "Back to your gallipots, young man." From 
this extreme we have all shades of opinion to that vague 
and moderate apprehension much current among young 
persons influenced by a certain smart sound in the mod- 
ern French phrase l Art pour I' Art, or by the German 
nickname of "tendency-books," that a moral intention 
on the part of an artist is apt to interfere with the nat- 
uralness or intrinsic beauty of his work ; that in art the 
controlling consideration must always be artistic beauty; 
and that artistic beauty is not only distinct from, but 
often opposed to moral beauty. Now, to discuss this 
question a priori: to go forward and establish an aesthetic 
basis for beauty, involving an examination which must 
range from Aristotle to Kant and Burke and Mr. Grant Al- 
len's physiological theories, would require another course 
of lectures quite as long as that which is now ending; so 
that all I can hope to do is but to throw, if I can, some 
light upon this question. And, so to proceed imme- 
diately to that work with some system : permit me to re- 
call to you in the first place that the requirement has 



And the Principle of its Development. 273 

been from time immemorial that wherever there is 
contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the 
moral side prevail, all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us 
out the most ravishing combination of tender curves and 
spheric softness that ever stood for woman ; yet if the 
lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the 
brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the phy- 
sical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor — un- 
less he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral pur- 
pose — may as well give over his marble for paving-stones. 
Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not 
accept his work. For indeed we may say that he who 
has not yet perceived how artistic beauty and moral 
beauty are convergent lines which run back into a common 
ideal origin, and who therefore is not afire with moral 
beauty just as with artistic beauty — that he, in short, 
who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal 
frenzy in which the beauty of holiness and the holiness 
of beauty mean one thing, burn as one fire, shine as one 
light, within him ; — he is not yet the great artist. Here 
it is most instructive to note how fine and beautiful souls 
of time appear after awhile to lose all sense of distinction 
between these terms. Beauty, Truth, Love, Wisdom, 
Goodness, and the like. Hear some testimony upon this 
point: this is a case for witnesses. Let us call first Keats. 
Keats does not hesitate to draw a moral even from his 
Grecian Urn, and even in the very climacteric of his 
most " high sorrowful " song ; and that moral effaces the 
distinction between truth and beauty. " Cold pas- 
toral " he cries, at the end of the Ode on a Grecian 
Urn. 

" When old age shall this generation waste, 
Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe 
12* 



2 74 1^^^ English Novel 

Than ours, a friend to man to whom thou say'st 
Beauty is truth, truth, beauty, — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 

Again, bearing in mind this identity of truth and 
beauty in Keats' view, observe how Emerson, by strange 
turns of thought, subtly refers both truth and beauty to 
a common principle of the essential relation of each thing 
to all things in the universe. Here are the beginning 
and end of Emerson's poem called Each and All : 

" Little thinks in the field yon red-cloaked clown 

Of thee from the hill-top looking down ; 

The sexton tolling his bell at noon 

Deems not that great Napoleon 

Stops his horse and lists with delight 

While his files sweep 'round Alpine height ; 

Nor knowest thou what argument 

Thy^life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. 

All are needed by each one ; 

Nothing is fair or good alone." 

Nothing is fair or good alone : that is to say fairness 
or beauty, and goodness depend upon relations between 
creatures ; and so, in the end of the poem, after telling 
us how he learned this lesson by finding that the bird- 
song was not beautiful when away from its proper rela- 
tion to the sky and the river and so on, we have this : — 

"Then I said ' I covet truth ; 

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat ; 

I leave it behind with the games of youth." 

As I spoke, beneath my feet 

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, 

Running over the club-moss burs ; 

I inhaled the violet's breath ; 

Around me stood the oaks and firs ; 



A7td the Principle of its Development. .275 

Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground ; 

Over me soared the eternal sky, 

Full of light and of deity ; 

Again I saw, again I heard 

The rolling river, the morning bird ; 

Beauty through my senses stole, 

I yielded myself to the perfect whole." 

But again, here Mrs. Browning, speaking by the mouth 
of Adam in The Drama of Exile, so far identifies beauty 
and love as to make the former depend on the latter ; 
insomuch that Satan, created the most beautiful of all 
angels, becomes the most repulsive of all angels from 
lack of love, though retaining all his original outfit of 
beauty. In TJie Drama of Exile, after Adam and Eve^ 
have become wise with the great lessons of grief, love 
and forgiveness, to them comes Satan, with such talk as 
if he would mock them back into their misery ; but it is 
fine to see how the father of men now instructs the prince 
of the angels upon this matter of love and beauty. 

Eve. — Speak no more with him. 

Beloved ! it is not good to speak with him. 

Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more ! 

We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn, 

Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting, 

Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft, 

We would'be alone. Go. 
Liic. — Ah ! ye talk"the same. 

All of you — spirits and clay — go, and depart ! 

In Heaven they said so ; and at Eden's gate,— 

And here, reiterant, in the wilderness. 

None saith, stay with me, for thy face is fair ! 

None saith, stay with me, for thy voice is sweet ! 

And yet I was not fashioned out of clay. 

Look on me, woman ! Am I beautiful ? 
Eve. — Thou hast a glorious darkness. 
Luc. — Nothing more ? 



276 The English Novel 

Eve. — I think, no more. 

Luc. — False Heart — thou thinkest more! 

Thou canst not choose but think it, that I stand 

Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves 

Were fashioned very good at best, so we 

Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word 

Which thrilled behind us, God Himself being moved 

When that august mark of a perfect shape, — 

His dignities of sovran angel-hood, — 

Swept out into the universe, — divine 

With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods. 

And silver-solemn clash of cyinbal-wings ! 

Whereof was I, in motion, and in form, 

A part not poorest. And yet, — yet, perhaps, 

ThisTieauty which I speak of is not here. 

As God's voice is not here, nor even my crown 

I do not know. What is this thought or thing 

Which I call beauty ? is it thought or thing ? 

Is it a thought accepted for a thing ? 

Or both ? or neither ? — a pretext — a word ? 

Its meaning flutters in me like a flame 

Under my own breath : my perceptions reel 

For evermore around it, and fall off, 

As if, it, too, were holy. 

Eve, — Which it is. 

Adam. — The essence of all beauty, I call love. 
The attribute, the evidence, the end. 
The consummation to the inward sense, 
Of beauty apprehended from without, 
I still call love. As form, when colorless, 
Is nothing to the eye, — that pine-tree there, 
Without its black and green, being all a blank, — 
So, without love, is beauty undiscerned, 
In man or angel. Angel ! rather ask 
What love is in thee, what love moves to thee. 
And what collateral love moves on with thee ; 
Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful. 

Luc. — Love ! what is love ? I lose it. Beauty and love 
I darken to the image. Beauty — love ! 



And the Principle of its Development. 277 

Let us now carry forward this connection between 
love and beauty in listening to a further testimony of 
Emerson's in a poem called The Celestial Love, where, 
instead of identifying beauty and trutli with Keats, we 
find him making love and truth to be one. 

" Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, 
Bound for the just but not beyond ; 
Not glad, as the low-loving herd, 
Of self in other still preferred 
But they have heartily designed 
The benefit of broad mankind 
And they serve men austerely, 
After their own genius, clearly. 
Without a false humility ; 
For this is love's nobility. — 
Not to scatter bread and gold, 
Goods and raiment bought and sold ; 
But to hold fast his simple sense, 
And speak the speech of innocence, 
And with hand, and body, and blood. 
To make his bosom-counsel good. 
For he that feeds men serveth few ; 
He serves all that dares be true." 

And in connection with these lines : — 

" Not glad, as the low-loving herd, 
Of self in other still preferred," 

I must here beg you to observe the quite incalculable 
advance in the ideal of love here presented by Emerson, 
and the ideal which was thought to be the crown and 
boast of the classic novel a hundred years ago, and 
which is still pointed to with exultation by thoughtless 
people. This ideal, by universal voice was held to have 
been consummated by Fielding in his character of Squire 



278 The English Novel 

Allworthy, in the famous novel, Tom Jones. And here 
it is : we have a dramatic presentation of Squire Allwor- 
thy early on a May morning, pacing the terrace before 
his mansion which commanded a noble stretch of coun- 
try, and then Fielding glows thus : " In the full blaze 
of his majesty up rose the sun, than which one object 
alone in this lower creation could be more glorious, and 
that Mr. Allworthy himself presented — a human being 
replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he 
might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by 
doing most good to his creatures." Here Mr. AUworthy's 
benevolence has for its object to render himself most 
acceptable to his Creator; his love, in other words, is 
only another term for increasing his account in the Bank 
of Heaven ; a perfect example, in short, of that love of 
the low-loving herd which is self in other still preferred. 
But now let me once more turn the tube and gain 
another radiant arrangement of these kaleidoscopic 
elements, beauty and love and the like. In Emerson's 
poem called " Beauty," which must be distinguished from 
the " Ode to Beauty," the relation between love and beauty 
takes this turn : " Seyd," he says, " chased beauty 



" Everywhere, 
In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 
He smote the lake to feed his eye 
With the beryl beam of the broken wave 
He flung in pebbles well to hear 
The moment's music which they gave. 
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
From nodding pole and belting zone. 

He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centred and from errant sphere. 
The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 



A?id the Principle of its Development. 279 

Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime, 
In dens of passion, pits of woe, 
He saw strong Eros struggling through, 
To sum the doubt and solve the curse 
And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
While thus to love he gave his days 
In loyal worship, scorning praise," 

(where, you observe, love is substituted for beauty, as 
that to which he gave his days, in the most naive assump- 
tion that the one involved the other.) 

" While thus to love he gave his days 
In loyal worship, scorning praise, 
How spread their lures for him in vain 
Thieving ambition and paltering gain ! 
He thought it happier to be dead, 
To die for Beauty, — than live for bread." 

George Eliot has somewhere called this word love 
a word-of-all-work. If with another turn I add to these 
testimonies one from Swedenborg, in which this same 
love — which we have just seen to be beauty — which 
beauty we just before saw to be truth — is now identified 
with ivisdom : we prove the justice of George Eliot's 
phrase. In Section X of his work on the Divine Provi- 
dence Swedenborg says : " The good of love is not good 
any further than it is united to the truth of wisdom ; and 
the truth of wisdom is not truth any further than it is 
united to the good of love ; " and he continues in section 
XIII : " Now because truth is from good, as wisdom is 
from love, therefore both taken together are called love 
or good ; for love in its form is wisdom, and good in its 
form is truth." 

And finally does not David practically confirm this 
view where, in Psalm CXIX. he involves the love of the 



28o The English Novel 

law of God with wisdom in the verse : " I understand 
more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts ? " 

But I grieve that there is no time to call more wit- 
nesses ; for I love to assemble these lofty spirits and hear 
them speak upon "one topic. Is it not clear that in the 
minds of these serious thinkers truth, beauty, wisdom, 
goodness, love, appear as if they were but orators of one 
and the same essential God ? 

And if this be true cannot one say with authority to 
the young artist, — whether working in stone, in color, 
in tones or in character-forms of the novel : so far from 
dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your 
beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that 
unless you are suffused — soul and body, one might say 
— with that moral purpose which finds its largest expres- 
sion in love — that is, the love of all things in their pro- 
per relation — unless you are suffused with this love do 
not dare to meddle with beauty, unless you are suffused 
with beauty, do not dare to meddle with love, unless you 
are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with good- 
ness, — in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, 
truth, wisdom, goodness and love, abandon the hope that 
the ages will accept you as an artist. 

Of course I leave out of view here all that field of ar- 
tistic activity which is merely neutral, which is — not 
immoral but — merely ?/;/moral. The situations in Scott's 
novels for instance do not in general put us upon any 
moral question as between man and man. Or when our 
own Mr. Way paints his luminous bunches of grapes, 
one of which will feed the palates of a thousand souls 
though it is never eaten, and thus shows us how Art re- 
peats the miracle of the loaves and fishes, feeding the 
multitude and leaving more of the original provision than 
was at first ; we have most delightful unmoral art. This 



And the Principle of its Development. 281 

is not only legitimate, but I think among the most bene- 
ficent energies of art ; it rests our hearts, it gives us holi- 
day from the Eternal Debate, it re-creates us for all 
work. 

But now secondly, as to the influence of moral pur- 
pose in art : we have been in the habit, as you will re- 
member, of passing at the earliest possible moment from 
abstract discussion to the concrete instance ; and if we 
now follow that course and inquire, — not whether moral 
purpose may interfere with artistic creation, — but whether 
moral purpose Jias interfered with artistic creation, as 
matter of fact, in the works of those whom the ages have 
set in the highest heaven of art, we get a verdict which 
seems to leave little room for question. At the begin- 
ning we are met with the fact that the greatest work has 
always gone hand in hand with the most fervent moral 
purpose. For example, the most poetical poetry of 
which we know anything is that of the author of Job, 
and of David and his fellow psalm-writers. I have used 
the expression " most poetical " here with design ; for 
regarded as pure literature these poems in this particular 
of poeticalness, of pure spirituality, lift themselves into a 
plane not reached by any others. A single fact in proof 
of this exceeding poeticalness will suffice : it is the fact 
that these poems alone, of all ever written, bear translation 
from one language into another without hurt. Surely 
this can be said of no other poetic work. If we strike 
away all allowances of amateurishness and good fellow- 
ship and judge with the uncompromising truth of the 
pious artist ; how pitiful is Homer as he appears in even 
Pope's English ; or how subtly does the simplicity of 
Dante sink into childishness even with Mr. Longfellow 
interpreting ; or how tedious and flat fall the cultured sen- 
tences of Goethe even in Taylor's version, which has by 



282 The English Novel 

many been declared the most successful translation ever 
made, not only of Faust but of any foreign poem ; nay, 
how completely the charm of Chaucer exhales away even 
when redacted merely from an older dialect into a later one, 
by hands so skillful as those of Dryden and Wordsworth. 

Now, it is words and their associations which are 
untranslatable, not ideas ; there is no idea, whether 
originating in a Hebrew, Greek or other mind, which 
cannot be adequately produced as idea in English words; 
the reason why Shakspeare and Dante are practically 
untranslatable is that recognizing how every word means 
more than itself to its native users, — how every word is 
like the bright head of a comet drawing behind it a less 
luminous train of vague associations which are associa- 
tions only to those who have used such words from 
infancy, — Shakspeare and Dante, I say, have used this 
fact, and have constructed poems which necessarily mean 
more to native hearers than they can possibly mean to 
any foreign ear. 

But this Hebrew poetry which I have mentioned is so 
purely composed of ideas which are universal, essential, 
fundamental to the personality of man, instantly recog- 
nizable by every soul of every race, — that they remain 
absolutely great, absolutely artistic, in whatever language 
they are couched. 

For example : if one climbs up for a moment out of 
that vagueness with which Biblical expressions, for 
various reasons, are apt to fall upon many ears, so that 
one may consider the clean and virgin quality of ideas 
clarified from all factitious charm of word and of as- 
sociation, — what could be more nearly perfect as pure 
literature than this : 

" The entrance of Thy words giveth light ; 
it giveth understanding unto the simple. 



And the Principle of its Development. 283 

I opened my mouth and panted ; 
for I longed for Thy commandments. 

Dehver ine from the oppression of man : 
so will I keep Thy precepts. 

Order my steps in Thy word, 
and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. 

Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant ; 
and teach me Thy statutes. 

Rivers of waters run down my eyes 
because they kept not Thy law." 



Or this : 

" I will lift up mine eyes to the hills 
whence cometli my help. 

My help cometh from the Lord 
which made heaven and earth. 

The Lord is thy keeper : the Lord is thy shade 
upon thy right hand. 

The sun shall not smite thee by day, 
nor the moon by night. 

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil : 
He shall preserve thy soul. 

The Lord shall preserve thy going out 
and thy coming in from this time forth 
even for evermore." 

Or this, of Isaiah's : 

" Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the 
deaf unstopped. 

Then the lame shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb 
shall sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a 
pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. 

In the habitations of dragons where each lay shall be grass with 

reeds and rushes No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous 

beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there ; but the 
redeemed shall walk there ; 

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion 
with songs of everlasting joy upon their heads : they shall obtain 
joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 



284 The English Novel 

Or this, from the author oi Job : 

" Surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where 
they fine it 

As for the earth, out of it cometh bread : and under it is turned 
up as it were fire. 

But where shall wisdom be found ? 

And where is the place of understanding ? 

.... The depth saith, it is not in me : and the sea saith, it is 
not with me. 

.... Destruction and death say, we have heard the fame thereof 
with our ears ; God understandeth the ways thereof and he 
knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the 
earth, and seeth under the ivJiole heaven ; 

.... When He made a decree for the rain and a way for the 
lightning of the thunder : 

Then did He see it and declare it; 
He prepared it, yea, and searched it out. 
And unto man He said: " Behold the fear of the Lord, that 
is wisdom ; and to depart from evil is understanding." 

Here it is apparent enough that the moral purpose 
with which these writers were beyond all question sur- 
charged, instead of interfering with the artistic value of 
their product, has spiritualized the art of it into an inten- 
sity which burns away all limitations of language and 
sets their poems as indestructible monuments in the 
hearts of the whole human race. 

If we descend to the next rank of poetry I have only 
to ask you to observe how, in Shakspeare, just as the 
moral purpose becomes loftier the artistic creations be- 
come lovelier. Compare, for example, the forgiveness 
and reconciliation group of plays as they have been called, 
Winter's Tale, Henry VIII, and The Tempest, (which 
must have been written late in Shakspeare's life when the 
moral beauty of large forgiveness seems to have taken 



And the Principle of its Development. 285 

full possession of his fancy, and when the moral purpose 
of displaying that beauty to his fellow-men seemed to 
have reigned over his creative energy) : compare, I say, 
these plays with earlier ones, and it seems to me that all the 
main creations are more distinctly artistic, more spirit- 
ually beautiful, lifted up into a plane of holy ravishment 
which is far above that of all the earlier plays. Think 
of the dignity and endless womanly patience of Hermione, 
of the heavenly freshness and morning quality of Per- 
dita, of the captivating roguery of Autolycus, in Winter's 
Talc; of the colossal forgiveness of Queen Katherine in 
Henry VIII, of the equally colossal pardon of Prospero, 
of the dewy innocence of Miranda, of the gracious and 
graceful ministrations of Ariel, of the grotesqueries of 
Caliban and Trinculo, of the play of ever-fresh delights 
and surprises which make the drama of The Tempest a 
lone and music-haunted island among dramas! Every- 
where in these latter plays I seem to feel the brooding of a 
certain sanctity which breathes out of the larger moral 
purpose of the period. 

Leaving these illustrations, for which time fails, it seems 
to me that we have fairly made out our case against 
these objections if, after this review of the connection 
between moral purpose and artistic creation we advance 
thirdly to the fact — of which these objectors seem pro- 
foundly oblivious — that the English novel at its very 
beginning announces itself as the vehicle of moral purpo- 
ses. You will remember that when discussing Richard- 
son and Fielding, the first English novelists, I was at 
pains to show how carefully they sheltered their works 
behind the claim of this very didacticism. Everywhere 
in Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, Tom Jones, in the preface, 
sometimes in the very title-page, it is ostentatiously set 
up that the object of the book is to improve men's 



286 The English Novel 

moral condition by setting before them plain examples 
of vice and virtue. 

Passing by, therefore, the absurdity of the statement 
that the proper office of the novelist is to amuse, and that 
when George Eliot pretended to do more, and to instruct, 
she necessarily failed to do either; it is almost as odd to 
find that the very objectors who urge the injurious effect 
of George Eliot's moral purpose upon her work are 
people who swear by Richardson and Fielding, utterly 
forgetting that if moral purpose is a detriment to Daniel 
Deronda, it is simply destruction to Clarissa Harloive 
and Tojjt Jones. 

And lastly upon this point, when I think of the crude 
and hasty criticism which confines this moral purpose in 
Daniel Deronda to the pushing forward of Deronda's 
so-called religious patriotism in endeavoring to re-estab- 
lish his people in the ancient seat of the Hebrews, — a 
view which I call crude and hasty because it completely 
loses sight of the much more prominent and important 
moral purpose of the book, namely, the setting forth of 
Gwendolen Harleth's repentance ; when, I say, I hear 
these critics not only assume that Deronda's mission is 
tlie moral purpose of this book, but even belittle that by 
declaring that George Eliot's enthusiasm for the rehabili- 
tation of the Jews must have been due to a chance per- 
sonal acquaintance of hers with some fervid Jew who led 
her off into these chimerical fancies ; and when, I find 
this tone prevailing not only with the Philistines, 
but among a great part of George Eliot's other- 
wise friends and lovers : then I am in a state of 
amazement which precludes anything like critical 
judgment on my part. As for me, no Jew — not 
even the poorest shambling clothes-dealer in Harrison 
street — but startles me effectually out of this work-a-day 



And the Principle of its Development. 287 

world : when I look upon the face of a Jew, I seem to 
receive a message which has come under the whole sea 
of time from the further shore of it : this wandering per- 
son, who without a home in any nation has yet made a 
literature which is at home in every nation, carries me 
in one direction to my mysterious brethren, the cave- 
men and the lake dwellers, in the other direction to the 
carpenter of Bethlehem, climax of our race. And now, 
to gather together these people from the four ends of the 
earth, to rehabilitate them in their thousand-fold conse- 
crated home after so many ages of wandering, tore-make 
them into a homologous nation at once the newest and 
the oldest upon the earth, to endow the 19th Century 
with that prodigious momentum which all the old Jew- 
ish fervor and spirituality and tenacity would acquire 
in the backward spring from such long ages of restraint 
and oppression, and with the mighty accumulation of 
cosmopolitan experiences ; the bare suggestion would 
seem enough to stir the blood of the most ungentle 
Gentile. 

But I must hasten to complete the account of 
George Eliot's personal existence which we suspended 
at the point where she had come to London in 185 i. 

She had been persuaded to this step by Dr. Chapman, 
who was at that time editor of the Westminster Re- 
vinv, and who asked her to come and help him to conduct 
that publication. At this time she must have been one 
of the most captivating companions imaginable. She 
knew French, German and Italian, and had besides a 
good knowledge of Latin, Greek, Russian and Hebrew. 
She was a really good player of the piano, and had some 
proficiency on the organ ; she had already mixed in 
some of the best society of London, for, in 1841, her 
father had moved to Foleshill, near Coventry, and here 



288 The English Novel 

she quickly became intimate in the household of Mr. 
and Mrs. Charles Bray, where she met such people as 
Emerson, George Combe, Mr. Froude, and many other 
noted ones of the literary circles which the Brays de- 
lighted in drawing about them ; her mind had been 
enlarged by the treasures of the Continent which she 
visited with her life-long friends, the Brays, in 1849, after 
the death of her father, remaining at Geneva after the 
Brays returned to England ; she had all that homely 
love which comes with the successful administration of 
breakfast, dinner and supper, for her sisters and brothers 
had all married, and she lived alone with her father after 
his removal to Coventry in 1841, and kept his house for 
him from that time until his death, not only with great 
daughterly devotion but, it is said, with great success as 
a domestic manager ; besides thus knowing the mys- 
teries of good coffee and good bread she was widely 
versed in theology, philosophy and the movements of 
modern science : all of which equipment was permeated 
with a certain intensity which struck every one who 
came near her. With this endowment she came to Lon- 
don in 1851, as I have said, by Dr. Chapman's invitation, 
and took up her residence at Dr. Chapman's house. 
Here she immediately began to meet George H. Lewes, 
Carlyle, Mill and Herbert Spencer. Of her relations to 
Lewes it seems to me discussion is not now possible. It 
is known that Lewes' wife had once left him, that he had 
generously condoned the offense and received her again, 
and that in a year she again eloped ; the laws of England 
make such a condonation preclude divorce ; Lewes was 
thus prevented from legally marrying again by a techni- 
cality of the law which converted his own generosity into a 
penalty ; under these circumstances George Eliot, moved 
surely by pure love, took up her residence with him, 



And the Principle of its Development. 289 

and according to universal account, not only was a faith- 
ful wife to him for twenty years until his death, but was a 
devoted mother to his children. That her failure to go 
through the form of marriage was not due to any con- 
tempt for that form, as has sometimes been absurdly 
alleged, is conclusively shown by the fact that when she 
married Mr. Cross, a year and a half after Lewes' death, 
the ceremony was performed according to the regular 
rites of the Church of England. 

The most congenial of George Eliot's acquaintances 
during these early days at the Chapman's in London was 
Mr. Herbert Spencer. For a long time indeed the story 
went the rounds that Mr. Spencer had been George 
Eliot's tutor ; but you easily observe that when she met 
him at this time in London she was already thirty-one 
years old, long past her days of tutorship. The story 
however has authoritatively been denied by Mr. Spencer 
himself. That George Eliot took pleasure in his philos- 
ophy, that she was especially conversant with his Princi- 
ples of Psychology, and that they were mutually-admiring 
and mutually-profitable friends, seems clear enough; but 
I cannot help regarding it a serious mistake to suppose 
that her novels were largely determined by Mr. Spencer's 
theory of evolution, as I find asserted by a recent critic 
who ends an article with the declaration that " the writ- 
ings of George Eliot must be regarded, I think, as one 
of the earliest triumphs of the Spencerian method of 
studying personal character and the laws of social life." 

This seems to me so far from being true that many of 
George Eliot's characters appear like living objections to 
the theory of evolution. How could you, according to 
this theory, evolve the moral stoutness and sobriety of 
Adam Bede, for example, from his precedent conditions, 
to wit, his drunken father and querulous mother? How 

13 



290 The English Novel 

could you evolve the intensity and intellectual alertness 
of Maggie Tulliver from her precedent conditions, to wit, 
a flaccid mother, and a father wooden by nature and 
sodden by misfortune ? Though surely influenced by 
circumstances her characters everywhere seem to flout 
evolution in the face. 

But the most pleasant feature connected with the in- 
tercourse of George Eliot and Herbert Spencer is that it 
appears to have been Mr. Spencer who first influenced 
her to write novels instead of heavy essays in TJie 
Westminster. It is most instructive to note that this was 
done with much difficulty. Only after long resistance, 
after careful thought, and indeed after actual trial was 
George Eliot persuaded that her gift lay in fiction and 
not in philosophy; for it was pending the argument 
about the matter that she quietly wrote Scenes from 
Clerical Life and caused them to be published with all the 
precaution of anonymousness, by way of actual test. 

As to her personal habits I have gleaned that her manu- 
script was wonderfully beautiful and perfect, a delight to 
the printers, without blot orerasure, every letter carefully 
formed ; that she read the Bible every day and that one 
of her favorite books was Thomas a Kempis on The Imi- 
tation of Christ ; that she took no knowledge at second- 
hand ; that she had a great grasp of business, that she 
worked slowly and with infinite pains, meditating long 
over her subject before beginning ; that she was intensely 
sensitive to criticism; that she believed herself a poet in 
opposition to the almost unanimous verdict of criticism 
which had pronounced TJie Spanish Gypsy, Agatha and 
Tlic Legend of Jubal as failing in the gift of song, though 
highly poetic ; that the very best society in London — 
that is to say in the world — was to be found at her Sun- 
day afternoon receptions at the Priory, Regent's Park, 



And the Principle of its Developmoit. 291 

where she and Mr. Lewes hved so long ; and that she 
rarely left her own home except when tempted by a fine 
painting or some unusually good performance of music. 

I have given here a list of complete works, with dates 
of publication, as far as I have been able to gather. I 
believe this is nearly complete. 

Translation of Strauss' Lcbcitjesii, 1846; contributions 
to Westminster Review, from about 1850, during sev- 
eral years ; translation of Feuerbach's Essence of Cliris- 
tianity, 1854; Scenes of Clerical Life, Blackwood's, Mag- 
azine, 1857, — book-form 1858; Adam Bede, 1859; '^i^^ 
Mill on the Floss, i860; The Lifted Veil, Blackwood's 
Magazine, i860; Silas Marner, 1861; Ronwla, Cornhill 
Magazine, book-form, 1863; Felix Holt, 1866; TJie 
Spanish Gypsy, 1868: Address to Workine^i, Blackwood's 
Magazine, 1868; Agatha, 1869; How Lisa loved the king, 
Blackwood's Magazine, 1869; Middleniarch, 1871; The 
Legend of Jnbal, 1874; Daniel Dcronda, 1876; The Ln- 
pressiojis of Theophrastus Such, 1879; and said to have 
left a translation of Spinoza's Ethics, not yet published. 

As the mind runs along these brief phrases in which 
I have with a purposed brevity endeavored to flash the 
whole woman before you, and as you supplement that 
view with this rapid summary of her literary product, — 
the details of fact seem to bring out the extraordinary 
nature of this woman's endowment in such a way that 
to add any general eulogium would be necessarily to 
weaken the picture. There is but one fact remaining so 
strong and high as not to be liable to this objection, 
which seems to me so characteristic that I cannot do 
better than close this study with it. During all her later 
life the central and organic idea which gave unity to her 
existence was a burning love for her fellow-men. I have 
somewhere seen that in conversation she once said to a 



292 The English Novel 

friend : " What I look to is a time when the impulse to 
help our fellows shall be as immediate and as irresistible 
as that which I feel to grasp something firm if I am fall- 
ing," and the narrator of this speech adds that at the end 
of it she grasped the mantel-piece as if actually saving 
herself from a fall, with an intensity which made the ges- 
ture most eloquent. 

You will observe that of the two commandments in 
which the Master summed up all duty and happiness — 
namely, to love the Lord with all our heart, and to love 
our neighbor as ourself, George Eliot's whole life and 
work were devoted to the exposition of the latter. She 
has been blamed for devoting so little attention to the 
former; as for me, I am too heartily grateful for the stim- 
ulus of human love which radiates from all her works to 
feel any sense of lack or regret. This, after all — the 
general stimulus along the line of one's whole nature — 
is the only true benefit of contact with the great. More 
than this is hurtful. Now a days, you do not want an 
author to tell you how many times a day to pray, to 
prescribe how many inches wide shall be the hem of your 
garment. This the Master never did ; too well He knew 
the growth of personality which zvould settle these mat- 
ters, each for itself; too well He knew the subtle hurt of 
all such violations of modern individualism ; and after 
our many glimpses of the heartiness with which George 
Eliot recognized the fact and function of human person- 
ality one may easily expect that she never attempted to 
teach the world with a rule and square, but desired only 
to embody in living forms those prodigious generaliza- 
tions ' in which the Master's philosophy, considered 
purely as a philosophy, surely excelled all other systems. 

In fine, if I try to sum up the whole work of this 
great and beautiful spirit which has just left us in the 



And the Principle of its Developjnent. 293 

light of all the various views I have presented in these 
lectures, where we have been tracing the growth of 
human personality from yEschylus, through Plato, 
Socrates, the contemporary Greek mind, through the 
Renaissance, Shakspeare, Richardson and Fielding, 
down to Dickens, and our author, I find all the 
numerous threads of thought which have been put before 
you gathered into one, if I say that George Eliot shows 
man what he may be, in terms of what he is. 



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not had in this country since the time of Hawthorne." — Boston 
Advertiser. 

CUPID, M. D. A Story. By Augustus M. Swift, i vol., i2mo, ^i. 
" It is an extremely simple story, with a great and moving dramatic 
struggle in the heart of it." — The Independent. 

AN HONORABLE SURRENDER. By Mary Adams, i vol., 
i2mo, ^i.oo. 

KNIGHTS OF TO-DAY; or, Love and Science. By Charles 
Barnard. One vol., i 2mo, ^ i .00. 

THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MAGO; or, A Phoe- 
nician Expedition, B.C. 1000. By Leon Cahun. With 73 
illustrations by P. Philippoteaux. Translated from the French 
by Ellen E. Frewer. One vol., 8vo, ^2.50. 

THEOPHILUS AND OTHERS. By Mary Mapes Dodge. A 
book for older readers. One vol., i2mo, $1.50. 

SAXE HOLM'S STORIES. Two Series. Each one vol., i2mo, 
^1.50. 

HANDICAPPED. By Marion Harland. One voL, i2mo, $1.50. 

DR. JOHNS. Being a Narrative of Certain Events in the Life of an 
Orthodox Minister in Connecticut. By Donald G. Mitchell. 
Two vols., i2mo, $3.50. 

THE COSSACKS. A Story of Russian Life. Translated by Eugene 
Schuyler, from the Russian of Count Leo Tolstoy. One vol., 
i2mo, $1.25. 

RUDDER GRANGE. By Frank R. Stockton. A New and En- 
larged Edition. One vol., l6mo, paper, 60 cents; cloth, $1.25. 

THE SCHOOLMASTER'S TRIAL; or, Old School and New. 
By A. Perry. One vol., i2mo, Second Edition, $1.00. 

*^*For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 



STANDARD WORKS OF FICTION. 



THE ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN NOVELS. 



New Edition in TTandsotne liinding. Each, one vol. 13mOf 
uniform.. Ejcra Cloth, $1.35 2i<">' vol. 

"These delightful works well deserve their great success. . . . Not only is 
the couleur locale admirably preserved, but the very spirit of those who took part in 
the events is preserved." — President Andreiu D. White., LL.D. 

FRIEND FRITZ. A Tale of the Banks of the Lauter. In- 
cluding a Story of College Life. — "Maitre Nablot." 
" 'Friend Fritz" is a charmingly sunny and refreshing story." — N. Y. Tribune. 

THE CONSCRIPT. A Tale of the French War of 1813. With 
four full-page illustrations. 

•' It is hardly fiction — it is history in the guise of fiction, and that part of his- 
tory which historians hardly write, concerning the disaster, the ruin, the sickness, 
the poverty, and the utter misery and suffering which war brings upon the people." — 
Cincinnati Dai.y Comnercial. 

WATERLOO. A Story of the Hundred Days. Being a Sequel 
to " The Conscript." With four full-page illustrations. 

" Written in that charming style of simplicity which has made the Erckmann- 
Chatrian works popular in every language in which they have been published." — 
Ne7v York Daily Herald. 

THE PLEBISCITE. The Miller's Story of the War. A vivid 
Narrative of Events in connection with the great Franco- Prussian 
War of 1 87 1. 

THE BLOCKADE OF PHALSBURG. An Episode of the Fall 
of the First French Empire. With four full-page illustrations 
and a portrait of the authors. 

" Not only are they interesting historically, but intrinsically a pleasant, well-con- 
structed plot, serving in each case to connect the great events which they so graph- 
ically treat, and the style being as vigorous and charming as it is pure and 
refreshing." — P/tiladrlfhia Daily Inquirer. 

INVASION OF FRANCE IN 1814. With the Night March past 
Phalsburg. With a Memoir of the Authors. With four full- 
page illirstratioris. 

" All their novels are noted for the same admirable qualities — simple and effective 
realism of plot, incident and language, and a disclosure of the horrid individual 
aspects of war. They are absolutely perfect of their kind." — N. Y. Evening Mail. 

MADAME THERESE, or, the Volunteers of '92. With four 

full-page illustrations. 

" It is a boy's story — thafis, supposed to be written by a boy — and has all the 

freshness, the unconscious simplicity and na'hitti which the imagined authorship 

should imply ; while nothing more graphic, more clearly and vividly pictorial, has 

been brought before the public for many a day." — Boston Coinnioniuealth. 

*^ For sale by all booksellers., or sent., post-paid., upon receipt of price, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 



A NEW EDITION'. 

Books and Reading. 

BY 
NOAH PORTER, LL.D., President of Yale College. 

With an appendix giving valuable directions for courses oj 

reading^ prepared by James M. Hubbard, late 

of the Boston Public Library. 



1 vol., crown 8vo., _ _ - $2.00. 

It would be difficult to name any American better qualified 
than President Porter to give advice upon the important 
question of " What to Read and How to Read." His 
acquaintance with the whole range of English literature is 
most thorough and exact, and his judgments are eminently 
candid and mature. A safer guide, in short, in all literary 
matters, it would be impossible to find. 



"The great value of the book lies not in prescribing courses of reading, but in a 
discussion of principles, which lie at the foundation of all valuable systematic reading." 

— The Christian Standard. 

"Young people who wish to know what to read and how to read it, or how to pursue 
a particular course of reading, cannot do better than begin with this book, which is a 
practical guide to the whole domain of literature, and is full of wise suggestions for the 
improvement of the mind." — Philadelphia. Bulletin. 

"President Porter himself treats of all the leading departments of literature of course 
with abundant knowledge, and with what is of equal importance to him, wiih a very 
definite and serious purpose to be of service to inexperienced readers. There is no better 
or more interesting book of its kind now within their reach." — Boston Advertiser. 

" President Noah Porter's ' Books and Reading' is far the most practical and satis- 
factory treatise on the subject that has been published. It not only answers the questions 
'What books shall I read?' and 'How shall I read them?' but it supplies a large and 
well-arranged catalogue under appropriate heads, sufficient for a large family or a small 
public library." — Boston Zion^s Herald. 



*^* For safe by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid.^ upon receipt oJ 
frUe, by 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Pubmshrrs, 

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York, 



The Boy's Froissart, 

EDITED WITH AN INTKODUOTION 
By SIDNEY LANIER. 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS UY ALFRED KAPPES. 



One Volume, crown 8vo, extra cloth, - $3.00. 

" As you read of the fair kni!;hts and the foul knights— for Froissart tells o/ 
to!h — it cannot but occur to you that somehoiK it seems harder to be a good knight 
naii-a-days than it -<iias then , . , Ne'oerthcless the satne qualities ivhick made 
a manful fighter then, make one 7ioiu. To speak the very truth, to perform a promise 
to the utmost, to re7>ere>tce all ivomen, to maintain right and honesty, to help the 
iveak ; to treat high and lo^u ivith courtesy, to be constant to one lime, to be fair to a 
bitter foe, to despise luxury, to pursue simplicity, modesty and gentleness in heart 
and bearing, this luas in the oath of the young knight ivho took the stroke upon hint 
in the fourteenth century, and this is still tlie ivay to iviti lave and glory in the 
nineteenth" — Extract from the Preface. 



CRITICAli NOTICES. 

" There is no reason why Sir John Froissart should not become as well known to 
young readers as Robinson Crusue liimself." — Literary World. 

"Though I\Ir. Lanier calls his edition of Froissart a book for boys, it is a book fo> 
men as well, and manytht-re be of the latter who will enjoy its pages." — ,V. Y. Kve. Mail. 

" We greet this book with positive enthusiasm, feeling that the presentation of 
Froissart in a shape so tempting to youth is a particularly worthy task, particularly well 
done."— A^. V. Eve. Post. 

"The book is romantic, poetical, and full of the real adventure which is so mucl^ 
more wholesome, than the sham which fills so much of the stimulating juvenile literatura 
of the day." — Detroit Free Press. 

"That boy will be lucky who gets Mr. Sidney Lanier's 'Boy's Froissart' for a 
Christmas present this year. There is no better and healthier reading for boys than ' Fina 
.Sir John ; ' and this volume is so handsome, so well printed, and so well illustrated that 
it is a pleasure to look it over." — Nation. 

'* Mr. Sidney Lanier, in editing a boy's version of Froissart, has not only opened to 
them a world of romantic and poetic legend of the chivalric and heroic sort, but he has 
given them something which ennobles and does not poison the mind. Old Froissart was 
a gentleman every inch ; he hated the base, the cowardly, the paltry ; he loved the 
knightly, the heroic, the gentle, and this spirit breathes through all his chronicles. There 
is a genuineness, too, about his writings that gives them a literary value." 

— Baltimore Gazette. 

" In his work of editing the famous knightly chronicle that Sir Walter Scott declared' 
fispired him with more enthusiasm than even poetry itself, Mr. Lanier has shown, 
naturally, a warm appreciativeness and also a nice power of discrimination. He has 
culled the choicest of the chronicles, the most romantic, and at the same time most com- 
plete, and has digested them into an orderly compact volume, upon which the publishers 
have lavished fine paper, presswork and binding, and that is illustrated by a number of 
cuts." — Philadelphia Times. 



*^* For sale by all booksellers, or will be sent, post-paid, upon receipt of price 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

Nos, 743 AND 745 Broadway, New York. 



